Nelson father, child confirmed dead in Mumbai attacks

A foundation in Virginia is confirming the deaths of a Nelson County man and his teenage daughter in the terrorist attacks in India.

A spokeswoman with the Synchronicity Foundation said today that Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed while they were in a café in Mumbai.

Bobbie Garvey says the 58-year-old father and his daughter were identified by colleagues. The two lived at the Nelson foundation, about 15 miles southwest of Charlottesville, which promotes a high-tech form of meditation.

Garvey said Scherr is a Maryland native and a former college professor.

Garvey said four other members of a 25-member delegation from Synchronicity were injured and are recovering.

The Synchronicity Foundation was hosting a meditation program at the Oberoi Hotel, one of the sites hit by the attacks. Other Nelson County residents also were there.

Meanwhile today in Mumbai, a fresh battle raged at the luxury Taj Mahal hotel as commandos fired grenades at that landmark while other forces ended a siege at another five-star hotel.

The fighting comes two days after a chain of militant attacks across India’s financial center that began Wednesday night left at least 143 people dead.

Garvey said terrorists burst into a restaurant Wednesday in the hotel where the father and daughter were staying. She said six other Nelson County residents were in Mumbai for the program: Patty and Phil Duncan of Nellysford, Lisa Barizilay of Nellysford, Amy Venezian of Afton, Ben Radtke and Charles Cannon.

Cannon, the group’s founder and spiritual leader, and Radtke live at the monastery.

Cannon founded the Synchronicity monastery in Nelson in 1983. The decade before that, he studied Eastern philosophy in India and became a Vedic monk. Vedic philosophy is tied closely to Hindu sacred writings.

Cannon’s teachings incorporate technology, using music and vibrations to generate “authentic meditation,” Garvey said.

On 450 acres near Nellysford, the group built the Shrine of the Heart Synchronicity Sanctuary. The group has 12 monks who live on the monastery and about 30 members of the Synchronicity “secular community” who live nearby, Garvey said. The movement has thousands of members in other locations, she said.

Cannon’s role as spiritual leader takes him around the world, teaching seminars in spirituality and meditation. Often when he makes trips to India, “members of our community always say, we want to go and see what India’s all about,” Garvey said.

When Cannon scheduled his current trip to India, 25 members of the Synchronicity community, not all of them from Nelson County, signed up to go.

“They were having a wonderful time” visiting shrines and sacred sites, Garvey said. “Until the terrorists showed up.”

The attacks began after dark Wednesday, hitting two luxury hotels, including the Oberoi, which was hosting Cannon’s program, an airport, railway station and sites popular with tourists. Up to 16 groups attacked nine sites, according to The Associated Press.

Naomi Scherr’s mother lives at the monastery and did not go on the trip, Garvey said.

Two Canadian members of the group and two women from Tennessee were shot but were not killed.

Intelligence officials told The Associated Press that it is not clear who carried out the well-planned attacks, although a previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahideen said it was responsible. 