Less than five hours after a man shot up a Kansas bar, killing one Indian man and wounding two other people in an apparently racially motivated attack, an Applebee’s bartender 70 miles away made a 911 call.
The woman on the phone told the dispatcher that a man had come into her bar and told her he “had done something really bad and he was on the run from the police.”
The man wouldn’t tell her what he did but kept asking her to allow him to stay at her house. The bartender persisted, persuading him to tell her what happened. “He said he shot and killed two Iranian people in Olathe,” the bartender said.
She read the news and sure enough, noticed that a few hours earlier, a shooting had taken place in Olathe, a city about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. Her 911 call, later released by a local television station, led authorities to locate Adam Purinton, 51, of Olathe, late Wednesday and take him into custody. The phone call recording supports witness statements that the bar shooter thought the two men, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, were of Middle Eastern descent.
They were actually Indian nationals employed by the technology firm Garmin. They had received master’s degrees in the United States. Kuchibhotla died from his injuries Wednesday, and Madasani was released from the hospital the following day. An American who was wounded when he tried to intervene, Ian Grillot, remains hospitalized but continues to improve, doctors said.
