Vijaywada: A 25-year-old youth from Tenali, Pruthvi Raj Kandepi, was shot dead in a shootout in the Fifth Third Centre in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square in the state of Ohio, USA on Thursday.
According to reports, a man opened fire in the lobby of the Fifth Third Centre killing three people and wounding two others.
Dozens of police officers rushed to the scene and exchanged gunfire with the suspect as a crowd of people who had been on their way to work scattered across Fountain Square to safety. Those killed were identified as Pruthvi Raj Kandepi, 25, Richard Newcomer, 64, and Luis Felipe Calderón, 48.
The police said the gunman, Omar Santa Perez, 29, was shot and killed by police officers after a brief gun battle. The family members of Raj got the information of the shooting early Friday morning through friends of Raj.
Pruthvi Raj completed his B. Tech from VIT, Vellore and did his MSc from the University of California in the USA. He was working as a financial consultant in the head office of the Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati.
His father Gopinadh is a deputy executive engineer in the AP Housing Corporation at Vijayawada. He and his wife Sudharani live in Tenali in Guntur district. Their daughter Manogna is a third year BTech student at K.L. University.
The parents were too shocked to speak. Manogna said the family was planning Pruthvi Raj’s marriage and had told him to return to India in a few months.
Other family members said that Telugu Association of North America (TANA) is making arrangement to bring the body to India after completion of formalities in the USA.
