Indian student shot in fast-food joint

KANSAS CITY, KS — A ‘gifted student’ from India was shot and killed while working behind the counter of a Missouri fast-food joint during a robbery.

The stick-up man shot Sharath Koppu, a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Missouri in Kansas City (UMKC), in the back at J’s Fish and Chicken Market in Kansas City on July 6 as Koppu tried to flee.

“He had the same dreams like everyone else, to make it big in the land of opportunity,” his cousin Raghu Chowdavaram said in a solicitation on GoFundMe for funds to transport Koppu’s body back to India, a Kansas City Star report said.

According to UMKC Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal, Koppu was a “gifted student who had many friends among student and faculty,” adding that he was working on a master’s degree in computer science.

The Kansas City police has released surveillance video from inside the restaurant of the suspected shooter. Koppu arrived in the US from Hyderabad, where he was a software engineer.

Last year, another Hyderabad techie, Srinivas Kuchibotla, was shot dead in a bar near Kansas City in a suspected hate crime.