Injured good Samaritan says, “We’re all humans”

In the video posted on YouTube, Ian Grillot has his neck in a brace and his surgically repaired hand bandaged and protected.

He has heard, he says in the footage, that some have called him a hero.

“No, it’s not like that,” Grillot says.

“I was just doing what anyone should have done for another human being. It’s not about where he was from or his ethnicity. We’re all humans. I just felt I did what was naturally right to do.”

Grillot, 24, says he tried to intervene on Wednesday night when gunshots rang out at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kan. In the aftermath, investigators were working to determine whether the fatal attack, which left one Indian man dead, was “bias motivated.” Authorities have not called the incident a hate crime and have not released many details of the attack.

A longtime neighbor told The Associated Press on Saturday that shooting suspect Adam Purinton, 51, was always a drinker but became a “drunken mess” after his father died about 18 months ago.

Andy Berthelsen said he doesn’t believe the shooting stemmed from hatred, and that it likely resulted from Purinton’s physical and mental deterioration.

Purinton’s mother, Marsha Purinton, told The New York Times that her son “snapped, and this is not his typical self.”

The Kansas City Star reports that the shooting occurred shortly after halftime of the KU basketball game, when the bar was crowded. According to the newspaper, Purinton opened fire after telling two people, who were both Indian men, to “get out of my country.”

One of those two men, 32year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla, later died from the wounds he suffered in the encounter.

The second man, Alok Madasani, also 32, survived, as did Grillot, another patron at the bar.

Witnesses told the Star and The Washington Post that Purinton was thought to have been kicked out of Austins before the Wednesday night shooting occurred. Garret Bohnen, a bar regular who was there the night of the shooting, told The Post that Purinton “seemed kind of distraught.”

“He started drinking pretty fast,” he said.

Purinton’s comments indicated he believed Kuchibhotla and Madasani were of Middle Eastern descent. Grillot in the YouTube video describes the shooting, saying he tried to step in after a few rounds were fired and was hit.