OLATHE, Kan. (AP) – GPS devise-maker Garmin long has revered diversity in its workforce, even when the locale of its ever-sprawling operational headquarters – a largely white Kansas City suburb – didn’t reflect it.
It’s the place 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla came to work a few years ago. By his wife’s account Friday he willingly spent long hours on an aviation systems engineering team alongside Alok Madasani, a friend and colleague also 32 and from India.
Kuchibhotla’s trek led him to have a kinship with his boss, Lebanese native Didier Popadopoulos, who says he moved to America at Kuchibhotla’s age and once held the same Garmin job.
But Garmin – a billion-dollar tech giant launched in Kansas as a startup by two men nearly three decades ago – now is reeling, trying to digest Kuchibhotla’s shooting death Wednesday at a tavern just a mile down the road from work. Madasani was wounded, along with a stranger who tried to help.
Witnesses say the gunman, Adam Purinton, yelled at the two Indian men to “get out of my country” and opened fire. Purinton, who was arrested hours later at a bar in Missouri, remains jailed on murder and attempted murder charges.