The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Victims in shooting didn’t have any known links to gunman
CINCINNATI » The three people shot and killed in the lobby of a Cincinnati office building didn’t have any apparent connection to the gunman.
One was a longtime construction worker who was working in the building. Another moved to Cincinnati a year ago to take a better job with Fifth Third Bancorp. The youngest victim, at 25, was an engineer from India.
Two others recovering from being shot and who remained hospitalized Saturday didn’t work there every day, but they were there for meetings on Thursday morning.
Police don’t know yet why 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez began shooting randomly inside the bank headquarters. Investigators say he had never worked in the building or had any known association with it.
Built this city
Richard Newcomer was a supervisor for Gilbane Building Co. the past three years and spent much of his life on construction projects across Cincinnati.
The 64-year-old was overseeing work on the building’s third floor, the company said.
“He built this city,” Mayor John Cranley said Friday after speaking to Newcomer’s wife. “The buildings we live and work in, he helped construct. He loved the city.”
Newcomer’s brother said in a statement that “Rick and the others affected were in the right place at the wrong time.”
“Words cannot describe what I’m sure we are all feeling,” said Larry Newcomer. “Rick was a fun loving family man ... always quick with a joke.”
Big dreams
Prudhvi Kandepi came to the United States four years ago from India after graduating from college and received a master’s degree in computer engineering from the University of California in Riverside.
He was working as a consultant for the bank.
“He worked really hard to be where he was a couple of days ago,” Yash Yeddulapalli, Kandepi’s college roommate, told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “He had a lot of career goals and he wanted to support his family.”
Kandepi, 25, was just with his college friends during the Labor Day weekend on a trip he arranged to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. His friends said he always wanted to make people happy.
Better opportunity
Luis Calderon left his family in Miami a year ago to take a better, executive job with the bank, but he was trying to figure out how to get back to Florida, his wife said.
Calderon, 48, was born in the United States, but he grew up in Columbia. He moved to Cincinnati about a year ago because he thought it would benefit his two teenage children, Ana Maria Calderon told The Enquirer.
“To help us all more, he got a good job offer and it was a really tough decision to make because he was leaving everything behind,” she said.
He wanted to come back to his children within another a year or so, she said, once he had saved enough money.