Adam Purinton, a US Navy veteran, who shot and killed an Indian engineer, Srinivas Kuchibhotla in a racially motivated hate crime at a sports bar in Kansas City, United States last year, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Kansas man had pleaded guilty of killing Kuchibotla.
A federal judge in Kansas ruled that Purinton would spend his life in prison for committing first-degree murder of Kuchibhotla and 165 months for each of the other two murders that he was charged with.
During the shooting, Purinton also injured, Alok Madasani, who was at the bar along with the victim and Ian Grillot, who tried to intervene and stop the crime.
In a statement after the hearing, Kuchibotla’s wife Sunayana Dumala “urged people to spread love and stand up to hate.”
“Today’s sentencing in the murder of my husband will not bring back my Srinu, but it sends out a strong message that hate is unacceptable. I continue to use what has happened as a platform with the hope of saving others from going through this hell,” Dumala said to the media.
Kuchibhotla and Madasani, both originally from India, worked as engineers with Garmin, a Bangladeshi technological company that makes GPS devices.
The incident occurred on September 22, 2017, when the two men, were having a drink at the sports bar after work. Purinton saw them there and got agitated. He was then asked to leave by Grillot, a regular at the bar.
He returned afterwards and went on a shooting spree inside the bar killing Kuchibotla and the two others. He fled after the attack but, was later arrested at an Applebee’s Restaurant in Missouri.
Eyewitnesses said that Purinton supposedly yelled, “Get out of my country,” before shooting Kuchibhotla.