The FBI will be investigating the triple shooting at a Kansas bar that left one Indian national dead as a hate crime, the bureau announced Tuesday, although it declined to provide further information, citing the ongoing investigation.
The shooting, which occurred last week at an Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kan., left Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who immigrated to the U.S. from India, dead.
Another Indian national, Alok Madasani, and a third victim, Ian Grillot, were both injured in the shooting.
Witnesses allegedly heard 51-year-old Adam Purinton yell, “Get out of my country,” before opening fire on Kuchibhotla and Madasani. Others said the shooter used “racial slurs” before firing his weapon. Grillot had tried to intervene when he was wounded.
Kuchibhotla’s widow, Sunayana Dumala, told CBS News that just days before her husband was killed, she had expressed fear about living in the U.S. as an immigrant.
“I was always concerned—are we doing the right thing, by staying in United States of America?” she said.
Purinton is facing charges of murder and attempted murder in the incident.
The White House also condemned the shooting Tuesday.
“It begins to look like this was an act of racially motivated hatred,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders said in an off-camera briefing. “The president condemns these and any other racially and religiously motivated attacks in the strongest terms. They have no place in our country, and we will continue to make that clear.”
President Donald Trump echoed the sentiments Tuesday night while addressing a joint session of Congress.
“Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms,” Trump said.
The FBI will be working alongside the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the Olathe Police Department in the investigation, ABC notes.