Adam Purinton, the 52-year-old Kansas man who opened fire in a local bar last year, killing one Indian national and injuring two other people in an incident that sparked outrage across the globe, has pleaded guilty to his crimes.
According to the Washington Post, on Tuesday, Purinton pleaded guilty to one count of premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of attempted premeditated first-degree murder for his part in the horrific shooting at Austin’s Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kan., in February 2017.
Purinton is scheduled to be sentenced in May and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison under a plea agreement.
At the time of the shooting, witnesses said that Purinton had yelled “Get out of my country” before shooting men he thought were Iranian. Other witnesses said that the shooter used “racial slurs” before firing his weapon. The two men who were shot were, in fact, engineers working for the Garmin technology firm—Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani—who were originally from India. Kuchibhotla did not survive the shooting.
Madasani and Purinton’s third victim, Ian Grillot, did survive the shooting, and Grillot is credited with attempting to stand up to Purinton and being shot when he tried to stop Purinton.
The shooting prompted an FBI hate crime investigation, and last June, a federal grand jury indicted Purinton on two hate crime charges for killing Kuchibhotla and attempting to kill Madasani. The indictment accused Purinton of “intentionally and specifically” engaging “in an act of violence, knowing that the act created a grave risk of death to a person.”
Purinton pleaded not guilty in November to those charges, which, the Post notes, are separate from his plea agreement made on Tuesday. The hate crime charges carry the possibility of the death penalty, although the Justice Department has declined to comment on whether it will seek the death sentence in the case.