Indian shot in US hate crime

IN TRUMP’S AMERICA Navy veteran yells ‘get out of my country’ before shooting at software professional, friend in Kansas bar

WASHINGTON: An Indian-American IT engineer employed by a US company was fatally shot and his Indian colleague wounded by a white man who thought they were Middle Easterners and who was heard telling them to “get out of my country” at the time of the shooting.

The alleged shooter Adam Purinton, 51, a US Navy veteran, was charged on Thursday with the fatal shooting of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the IT engineer from Hyderabad, and wounding Alok Madasani, also from same city.

Kuchibhotla, 32, died in hospital, while Madasani, 32, was released from hospital on Thursday.

The circumstances of Purinton’s capture were an eerie repeat of the killing of Balbir Singh Sandhu, the first victim of the backlash after the 9/11 terror attacks who too was mistaken for a Middle Easterner. Like Sandhu’s killer, Purinton was caught drinking at a bar several hours later.

Purinton was also charged with shooting Ian Grillot, a white man who, according to witnesses, had tried to stop the shooting.

Kuchibhotla is possibly the first casualty of the religious, racial and ethnic divisiveness that has swept the US following the election of President Donald Trump, with minorities such as Jews and Muslims reporting a surge in attacks on them and their institutions.

Trump and his senior staff have railed against “radical Islam”, a loosely defined term used for Muslim terrorists, and have turned up the rhetoric in the context of the administration’s attempt, blocked by courts, to temporarily ban visaholders from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.

Wednesday’s shooting at Olathe city received little media attention outside of Kansas state, even after authorities charged Purinton for the incident.

There was no response from the local FBI bureau and police to emails requesting confirmation and details, but GPS-maker Garmin, which employed Kuchibhotla and Madasani, referred to the assault in an internal email to employees that was cited by

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