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Updated: Aug 30, 2017 19:14 IST

A 22-year-old Sikh man was allegedly stabbed to death by a passenger in his taxi on Tuesday in Bonner County, Idaho in the United States, which his family believes was a race attack.

Gagandeep Singh, a final year student of software engineering, was attacked by the passenger whom he picked up from the Spokane International Airport.

Reports identified Singh’s attacker as 19-year-old Jacob Coleman, who flew from Seattle to Spokane to start a new semester at Gonzaga University but was denied entry. They added Coleman, a resident of Puyallup in Washington, asked Singh to drive him to a fictitious friend’s house in Bonner County, Idaho.

Coleman attacked Singh with the knife he bought from a local store on the way near East Rail Road Avenue and surrendered to the local police at the crime scene.

He told the police he was upset as he didn’t get admission to Spokane-based Gongaza University where he wanted to study. The police have, however, found no record of his application at the university.

Coleman has been charged with first-degree murder.

A former resident of Preet Nagar in Jalandhar, Singh settled in Spokane, approximately 100 kms from Bonner County, in Washington state in 2003 along with his family.

Kamaljit Kaur, Singh’s mother, told the police she called her son who told her he was carrying a “white man” in his taxi. Kaur said she has even enquired about the behaviour of the man to which Singh said he was a “gentleman”.

She added her family feared something was wrong after Singh didn’t pick calls made around 6pm.

Singh was the nephew of Jalandhar-based Congress leader Manmohan Singh Raju.

“My nephew became a victim of racial hatred. As the Trump government is now showing exit doors to the Asians due to few job opportunities, Indians and Asians as a whole are becoming the victims of racial hatred,” Raju said.