Web Report
Dubai – It was a very sad incident when an Indian engineer Srinivas Kunchubhotla was killed and two others injured on Thursday at a bar in Kansas state of United States.
The wife of the engineer gunned down by an American man who allegedly told him to “get out of my country” has called on Donald Trump’s administration to fight hate crime.
Adam Purinton reportedly shouted racial slurs at Kuchibhotla and his friend before leaving the crowded bar in Kansas and returning with a gun and opening fire.
Kuchibhotla died from his wounds, while another Indian man Alok Madasani was injured and has since been discharged from hospital.
A third man, Ian Grillot, attempted to chase Purinton down, believing his weapon’s magazine was empty, before being shot himself.
Kuchibhotla’s wife said she had questioned whether the couple belonged in the US but was reassured by her husband, who would have celebrated his 33rd birthday next month.
“We’ve read many times in newspapers of some kind of shooting happening everywhere. “I was always concerned: ‘Are we doing the right thing staying in the United States of America?’ But he always assured me good things happen to good people,” Sunayana Dumala told a press conference.
Dumala described her husband was a “very loveable soul”, whose murder had plunged parents and relatives in India into grief.
“And I need an answer,” she added. “I need an answer from the government … about what they are going to do to stop this hate crime.”
Madasani’s father, Jaganmohan Reddy, said the shooting at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe had left him fearing for his son’s safety.
“I request other parents to think twice before sending their children to the United States,” he said.
Hours after the killing, Purinton – a 51-year-old US Navy veteran – reportedly walked into a bar in a town 70 miles away and told a member of staff he needed a place to hide because he had just killed “two Middle Eastern men”.
Authorities are investigating the possibility the killing was racially motivated amid concern the President’s “America First” rhetoric on jobs and immigration, including an attempted immigration ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.
