Two men shuffled down San Pablo Avenue on a wet December night. They passed a burger joint and doughnut shop before pausing at the door to Sahib Indian Restaurant.

One banged on the window. "You open?" he mouthed to his quarry inside.

It was a few minutes past 9 on Thursday night. Ravinder Kalsi, who owned the place with his brother, had locked up minutes earlier. Perhaps hoping to hear better, he turned the lock.

Opening the door became his last act in life.

The killers shot the 30-year-old dead in the doorway. They stepped past him and moved quickly. They touched nothing, said nothing. They found 42-year-old Paramjit Kalsi in the kitchen and shot him.

"It does not look like a robbery. It looks like these two guys went in there to kill," Richmond Detective Sgt. Mitch Peixoto said Friday morning. "That's what worries me. Why?"

The cryptic deaths of two prominent restaurateurs left the East Bay's substantial Sikh community scratching for explanations, as Richmond police reviewed surveillance camera footage and looked for witnesses....

Bal fears the killings could be a hate crime. Police say there is no clear evidence of a hate crime but say they will investigate all possibilities.

"We don't know yet, but going on what we've read in the paper, if they didn't even attempt to get into the register it tells me there's something going on here," [friend Gurman] Bal said. "Just from the facts it looks like they were targeted for who they are. It was a hate crime." [Link]