US Indians reach out in solidarity after fatal shooting

WASHINGTON: The Indian community in the United States reached out over the weekend in solidarity with the victims of an apparent hate crime in which an Indian engineer was shot dead in a Kansas bar.

Many community members remain in shock over the late Wednesday shooting in Olathe, a suburb of Kansas City, when a drunk white man allegedly opened fire on two young Indian engineers, screaming racial slurs and telling them “Get out of my country”.

“There’s no place for senseless violence & bigotry in our society,” tweeted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, one of the most prominent Americans of Indian descent.

“My heart is with the victims & families of the horrific shooting in Kansas,” he wrote on Saturday.

One of the engineers – Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32 – was shot dead at the bar. His friend, 32-year-old Alok Madasani, was wounded in the shooting. He has since been released from the hospital.

A white bar patron who tried to help and is being hailed as a hero, identified as Ian Grillot, was wounded and remains hospitalised.

Local police said the suspect, Adam Purinton, 51, is under arrest and faces an initial court hearing today. Purinton was arrested after police got a tip from a bartender in a nearby town that the suspect boasted of having killed two Middle Eastern men, the Kansas City Star reported.

A GoFundMe online fundraiser page was quickly set up after the shooting, and as of yesterday had collected more than US$600,000 (RM2.7mil), much of it in small contributions of US$5 (RM22) and US$10 (RM44).

The money is to help with the funeral expenses “and other ongoing support costs” for Kuchibhotla’s widow Sunayana Dumala.

“This includes the very expensive process of carrying his mortal remains back to India, so his parents can say goodbye one last time to their beloved son,” the page says.

Dumala said on Friday at Garmin, where her late husband worked as an aviation systems engineer, that she was initially concerned about racism in the United States.