Olathe shooting: Murder charge after Indian man killed in bar

Police are investigating whether the fatal shooting of a man in the US state of Kansas was racially motivated.

Three men were wounded in the shooting at a bar in Olathe on Wednesday night and one of them later died.

A barman told local media a man used racial slurs before opening fire. Two of the victims, including the deceased, are Indian, the BBC has learned.

Adam Purinton, 51, has been charged with murder and the FBI is investigating motive.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, died while his friend Alok Madasani, 32, remains in hospital in a stable condition.

The two men were engineers at Garmin and studied in India, according to their social media profiles.

The other injured man, Ian Grillot, 24, had apparently intervened to stop the violence, according to witnesses.

Speaking from his hospital bed, he told KBMC: “A lot of people are calling me a hero and this and that and the other – and it’s not like that.

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

Mr Purinton is accused of shooting customers at Austin’s Bar and Grill as they watched the University of Kansas basketball team play on television.

He was arrested five hours after the shooting about 70 miles away, at a bar in Clinton, Missouri.

A barman there tipped off police that he had a customer who had admitted to shooting two men and the officers arrived to detain the suspect, police said.

“He mentioned he had been involved in a shooting and we went out there and picked him up,” said the Clinton’s assistant police chief.

Olathe Police Chief Steve Menke declined to comment on the reports of racial abuse but said his force was working with the FBI “to investigate any and all aspects of this horrific crime”.

Source: BBC