US Navy veteran, Adam Purinton, the man who killed Srinivas Kuchibhotla and injured two others including an Indian, in a racially motivated shooting attack has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Srinivas was an engineer from Hyderabad.
The Johnson county, Kansas District Court judge James Charles Droege sentenced Adam Purinton to nearly 78 years in prison as part of a plea agreement reached in March, reported KSHB.
In March this year, Adam, 52, had pleaded guilty to the charges of murdering Kuchibhotla.
He was charged with first-degree murder of Srinivas, 32, and two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the shootings of his friend, Alok Madasani, and a bystander, who chased Purinton after he fled the Austin’s Bar and Grill in Olathe city on February 22 last year.
Witnesses said Purinton, who is white, uttered racial slurs at Srinivas and his friend, Madasani, both 32, as they enjoyed an after-work drink. He was asked to leave but eventually returned and yelled, “Get out of my country!” before firing at the men. A third man, Ian Grillot, was wounded when he tried to intervene.
On Friday, a federal judge in Kansas sentenced Purinton to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Srinivas and 165 months imprisonment for each of the other two murder charges, the PTI reported.
In January, Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s wife Sunayana Dumala, had launched a campaign titled 'Forever Welcome' to spread the message that immigrants were an integral part of the country.
Taking to Facebook, she spoke about her journey, days before she was scheduled to attend the maiden State of the Union address by US President Donald Trump.
“Do we belong? This is the question I asked 11 months ago, in my first Facebook post, days after my husband was taken from me. To my surprise, the post was widely spread and received an overwhelming response and an outpouring of love and support. Many writers and documentary filmmakers approached me, and I was often asked what compelled me to ask that question. It was my pain that made me write that elaborate and long post. My pain of losing a part of me - my Srinu. By sharing the story, I wanted to shed light on the fact that we were normal people; like everyone else, we had dreams of having a better future and family. But all of this got shattered because of one man’s ignorance," Sunayana wrote.