He became a hate crime victim. She became a widow

Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s death in an anti-immigrant attack at a Kansas bar made headlines the world over. Now his wife, Sunayana Dumala, tells her story

Sunayana Dumala tried once again to enter the worship room she and her husband, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, had created in their home for daily prayers. Kuchibhotla had built an intricate wooden shrine by hand two years ago: a small sacred edifice where they would kneel each morning.

Months after his death, it became a place where she would honour him.

On a Wednesday night in February, a man with a semi-automatic pistol and a distorted notion of American pride turned ordinary people into shooting victims and survivors – and he turned Dumala into a widow.

Kuchibhotla, an Indian-born engineer, was confronted about his immigration status at a bar, then fatally shot. By the time police arrived, Kuchibhotla was dying, and his close friend Alok Madasani was wounded. Another patron who tried to stop the attack was also struck by gunfire.

Three months to the day after her husband’s murder, Dumala stood at the entrance of the prayer room alone, looking toward a window that framed storm clouds. She turned away.

‘Get out of my country!’ shouted the gunman (AFP/Getty Images)

“Everything about this room, everything about this house,” she said later, “reminds me of my Srinu” – the nickname she gave him during their courtship.

It was in the quiet of the next morning that Dumala, 32, decided that would be the day she would step inside the worship room. What had been unbearable just the previous day seemed surmountable, if only because it was the next painful step.

So she willed herself up the stairs, inching past the framed collage of wedding photos, and into the room. She cleaned each of the deity figurines with warm water. Then she prayed for peace in a whisper just above the sound of children’s play at the elementary school next door.

In some ways, what one man shouted in anger and one woman uttered in grief capture one of America’s most troubling intersections.

“Get out of my country!” the gunman would yell, before opening fire on the two Indian men he later said he believed were from Iran.

“Do we belong here?” the widow would ask in a Facebook post six days after the shooting

The episode happened at dinnertime in a neighbourhood bar, part of a spasm of hatred that seems to be uncoiling in small towns and big cities across the nation – and in rising numbers.

“We’ve read many times in newspapers of some kind of shooting happening,” Dumala said at a news conference in February at the headquarters of Garmin, where Kuchibhotla was a senior aviation systems engineer. “And we always wondered: how safe?”

‘Do we belong here?’ asked Dumala, just days after her husban’s murder (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

The realisation that her husband was killed because of intolerance, because he was not born in America, is what forced her to emerge from this personal, private hell. She thought that if people were to know the aftermath of a hate crime, the crater-sized void and endless questions left behind, if the victims were rendered as three-dimensional, maybe there would be less fear, less hate.

“My story needs to be spread,” she said plainly. “Srinu’s story needs to be known. We have to do something to reduce the hate crimes. Even if we can save one other person, I think that would give peace to Srinu and give me the satisfaction that his sacrifice did not go in vain.”

A Prescient Dread

On the morning of his death, Kuchibhotla left for work before his wife. “Bye,” he said, hurrying past her, a casual farewell that would come to haunt Dumala for its brevity and finality.

Just before 6pm, Dumala texted and called Kuchibhotla to plan for the evening. His phone was off. She had hoped they could spend time that evening in their backyard, sipping tea and watching the sun lower into the horizon.

Dumala made calls to their friends looking for her husband. Maybe he had gone to have drinks at Austins Bar & Grill, his favourite after-work spot, with Madasani. But Madasani’s phone was off, too.

She began to scroll through Facebook. A news story popped into her feed: three people shot at Austins.

“I was getting scared, some kind of feeling was going through me. I was all alone,” she said, pausing to catch her breath, her face dampened by tears. “This is not my usual Srinu, I am saying to myself. He would have reached out to me somehow to let me know he is safe.”

Dumala’s instincts were right. The best friends were at Austins at their regular table on the patio, the one closest to the door, discussing Bollywood movies and drinking a pair of Miller Lites.

The assailant approached. Witnesses recall him wearing a white T-shirt with military-style pins, his head wrapped in a white scarf. He was intent on finding out one thing: did the men at the table belong in the country?

Adam W Purinton, a white Navy veteran, turned to the two brown-complexioned men, both living in the US for years, and demanded to know their immigration status.

“Out of the blue comes this weird-looking gentleman, I say weird-looking because he had anger on his face,” said Madasani, 32, an aviation systems engineer at Garmin. “I did not hear what he was saying instantly, but I saw the look on Srinivas’s face change drastically. I looked at Adam and he walked towards me, he came to me and said, ‘Are you here legally?’”

Madasani did not respond. Instead, he went inside to get the manager. Ian Grillot, 24, and another patron asked Purinton to leave and escorted him from the patio. But he didn’t go far, pacing outside in the parking lot.

Madasani said he and Kuchibhotla had decided to leave, but were stopped as one by one, other patrons apologised. One guy paid their tab; the bar manager gave them another round of beer and fried pickles, a favourite of Kuchibhotla. “Everybody kept coming up to us saying this is not what we represent; you guys belong here,” he said.

It was 7:15pm. The winter sun had already set, but it was unseasonably warm, in the high 70s. It was just after half time of the University of Kansas basketball game against Texas Christian University. Austins was packed with Jayhawks fans besides its usual cast of regulars.

Kuchibhotla and Madasani were back at their table talking. The crowd on the patio had thinned out during the half-time break, but the televisions were still blaring.

According to the authorities, Purinton returned to the bar with a handgun. He stood in the patio door and pointed his gun toward the two men.

Suddenly, the sound of gunfire. “Pop, pause, then pop, pop, pop,” said Tim Hibbard, the owner of a software company who was sitting at the bar sipping a Blue Moon beer. “It wasn’t like the movies where the gunfire is large and demanding of attention.”

As people scattered, Vincent Baird, who was headed to the gas station across the street, ran toward the chaos to help. With four years of experience as an Army medic, he went straight to Kuchibhotla, whose breathing was shallow and laboured.

Baird could see a gunshot wound in his chest. With the help of two others, Baird said, he cut a 4-inch square from an unused garbage bag and taped it over the wound.

‘I was getting scared, some kind of feeling was going through me. I was all alone’

Kuchibhotla stopped breathing at a couple of points, Baird said. Each time, he performed chest compressions until Kuchibhotla started breathing again and an ambulance arrived. Kuchibhotla was pronounced dead at the University of Kansas Hospital.

Purinton had fled amid the chaos. He ended up 80 miles away at a bar in Clinton, Missouri, where he told a bartender he had shot “two Iranians”.

The next day, Dumala learned the horrific details of her husband’s murder. An Olathe police officer and an FBI agent told her who had killed him, and why.

Purinton, 52, was formally charged with premeditated first degree murder and two counts of premeditated attempted murder. Last month, he was also indicted on federal hate crime charges.

The term “hate crime” was being used over and over by police, journalists and politicians to describe the death of her husband. All of a sudden, Kuchibhotla was a hate crime statistic, an example to bolster anti-hate legislation.

Dumala was aghast, baffled by the man who took her husband from her. “That guy, I think he was hurt, I don’t know what hurt him,” she said. “What is he doing by taking away this life? Did he serve his purpose? Did he lessen his anger? Even I have anger now, but that does not give me the right to go and take away his life.”

On a Tuesday afternoon in Hyderabad, the body of Srinivas Kuchibhotla was placed on a pyre of logs. His funeral was held nine days before what would have been his 33rd birthday.

© New York Times