A man injured in a fatal shooting in suburban Kansas City that witnesses say was racially motivated has said the alleged gunman asked two of the victims about their visa status before returning and opening fire, killing one and wounding another.
Witnesses told investigators that at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kansas on Wednesday evening, as patrons watched a Kansas-TCU basketball game, Adam Purinton yelled at two Indian men to “get out of my country” before opening fire.
One man, 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla, was killed. Two other men, 32-year-old Alok Madasani and 24-year-old Ian Grillot, were injured.
Madasani told the New York Times on Friday night Purinton “asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally”.
Both men were educated in the US and were working in the country legally.
Madasani told the Times: “We didn’t react. People do stupid things all the time. This guy took it to the next level.”
Madasani said he went to get a manager and by the time he returned to the patio, the man was being escorted out.
On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Kuchibhotla’s death was tragic but added that it would be absurd to link the action to President Trump’s strong rhetoric on immigration, according to Reuters.
At a press conference, Kuchibhotla’s wife, Sunayana Dumala, said her husband’s death raised questions about whether immigrants are valued in the US. She wanted an answer to just one question, she said: “Do we belong here?”
“He did not deserve a death like this,” Dumala said at the press conference, which was organized by her husband’s employer, the GPS device-maker Garmin. Kuchibhotla and Madasani, both engineers, worked at the company’s main campus a mile from the scene of the shooting. Garmin is one of the region’s best-known employers.
“I don’t know what to say,” Damala added. “We’ve read many times in newspapers of some kind of shooting happening somewhere. I was always concerned, ‘Are we doing the right thing staying in the US or America?’ But he always assured me good things happen in America.”
Though she did not mention Trump by name, Dumala directed anger at the US government, asking what officials would do to stop hate crimes.
“Not everyone will be harmful to this country,” she said.
Madasani’s father, Jaganmohan Reddy, said he had spoken with his wounded son by phone from India and was worried about his safety.
“I request other parents to think twice before sending their children to the United States,” he said.
Madasani has been released from hospital while Grillot remains hospitalized. As the gunfire began, Grillot hid under a table until nine shots had been fired. Believing the suspect’s magazine was empty, he chased the gunman in hopes of subduing him.
A bullet went through his right hand and into his chest, just missing a major artery but fracturing a vertebra in his neck.
“Another half-inch, I could be dead or never walk again,” he said on Thursday from his hospital bed in a video from the University of Kansas Health System. He did not describe what led to the shooting, saying only that he felt compelled to intervene to help others.
“I was just doing what anyone should have done for another human being,” he said.
Purinton was arrested early on Thursday at a restaurant bar in Clinton, Missouri and jailed on charges of murder and attempted murder. Local police were working with the FBI. Spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency’s role was to help determine if a civil rights violation had occurred.
Purinton, who was being held on $2m bond, was moved on Friday from Missouri to Kansas. Because he had not yet appeared in court, he did not have an attorney formally assigned to his case.
Beverly Morris, who has lived next door to Purinton in Olathe for about 20 years, said he had never made her feel unsafe.
“He seemed like a good guy,” Morris said, but “anybody who knew him knew he had a drinking problem.”
Another neighbor, Michael Shimeall, told a local newspaper that Purinton, a US navy veteran and qualified air traffic controller, seemed friendly and never showed a temper “or anything like that”.
Brandon Blum, a co-owner of Austins Bar & Grill, told the Associated Press on Saturday the bar has been a neighborhood fixture for 30 years and everybody was upset by Wednesday night’s attack. The bar reopened on Saturday and patrons who trickled in for lunch often hugged each other and staff.
Blum declined to discuss the attack in further detail or to say whether Purinton was a regular.
