Five Indian-American families in Middlesex County have been robbed at gunpoint in their homes since October 20. (Representational Image)
Neetu Singh was headed for the trash with a diaper from her son. She made her way from the family room to the back porch of her home in this Middlesex County suburb.
The lights were off outside, and beyond the family's corner lot and its 6-foot-high fence, the neighborhood was still.
Then as Singh started to slide open the glass door, she was set upon, overpowered by three assailants who sprang from the darkness. The men, their faces almost completely sheathed in black knit caps, burst in waving guns.
"Be quiet. Where is the money?" Singh said they demanded.
"Out of nowhere, there are like six hands pushing me. That was the first sight," Singh, 40, said this week, recalling the 25-minute home invasion and robbery in late October that has helped stoke anxiety among Indian-Americans in central New Jersey.
Five Indian-American families in Middlesex County have been robbed at gunpoint in their homes since Oct. 20. All but one of the robberies took place in late October, during and just after the roughly weeklong Hindu festival of Diwali, when families often have gold jewelry on hand as part of their celebration.
But the most recent home invasion, on Saturday in Old Bridge, raised fears that the robberies may not be over. In each case, the gunmen pointed their weapons at their victims' heads, tied the victims up and ransacked their houses, apparently looking for gold.
Gold is often worn during the festival, community members said. The Singhs were robbed of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of necklaces, rings, earrings and pendants.
The police and prosecutors have not publicly linked the five home invasions, which occurred in Edison, Old Bridge and South Plainfield. But the robberies have been similar, and this area of New Jersey is home to large communities of Indian-Americans.
On Nov. 12, the county prosecutor, Andrew Carey, appeared on TV Asia, a station watched by many Indian-Americans, to warn them and to talk about securing their homes.
Peter Kothari, a community activist, said that thefts from unoccupied homes had been a problem in some years but that the spree of home invasions was a violent escalation of crimes apparently driven by the festival. No serious injuries have been reported.
The latest robbery, on Saturday evening, confounded Kothari, given that the festival was over.
"Why is it happening now, well after?" he said Monday.
Kothari and some other Edison residents said they were not happy with the prosecutor, Carey, and the three towns' police departments. Kothari, for instance, wanted to know why no descriptions of the robbers had been released. He had also repeatedly asked Carey to call a news conference to bring more attention to the robberies, he said.
"The first, second, third home invasion, OK, you don't think it's a pattern," Kothari said. "But after the third, you agree it is a pattern, but yet you don't want to talk to the press?"
A spokesman for the Middlesex County prosecutor's office, James O'Neill, on Tuesday declined to explain why the office had not released descriptions of the robbers or why it would not discuss the similarities in the crimes.
Kothari said the crimes were most certainly aimed at Indian-Americans and needed to be treated as such.
"They are coming after Indian-Americans because they think they are passive people, they are not going to fight back - and most of them are well-to-do people," he said. "We will fight back."
© 2014, The New York Times News Service