A 25-year-old Indian financial consultant was among three people killed when a gunman opened fire in a bank building in the US city of Cincinnati before police shot him dead on Thursday, in the latest mass shooting incident in America.
Pruthviraj Kandepi, who hailed from Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, was killed when 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez from the town of North Bend, Ohio, opened fire at the headquarters for the Fifth Third Bank near Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati, police said.
India’s Consul General in New York Ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty told PTI that the Consulate is in touch with the police, Kandepi’s family as well as members of the community. An official of the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) said that Kandepi was working with the bank as a consultant.
Arrangements were being made to send his body to India, he added.
Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco knew Kandepi, she said on Facebook, when she announced the names of the victims. She met Kandepi at the Hindu temple of Cincinnati, Cincinnati.Com reported.
“How do you tell parents who live 10,000 miles away that they will never see their son again because of a senseless shooting in a foreign country?” she wrote. The other two victims were identified as Luis Felipe Calderon, 48 and Richard Newcomer, 64.
Five people were shot, some multiple times, in the incident, police said, adding that the gunman was killed in a shootout with officers.
It appeared the victims had no connection to each other. It was not immediately clear if any knew the gunman, media reports said on the latest mass shooting incident in the US.