While a US navy veteran gunned down an Indian engineer in an apparent hate crime at a restaurant in Olathe, Kansas, a 24 year old man is being hailed as a hero for trying to save another Indian by putting his own life at risk. Ian Grillot ended up getting shot himself in chest and arm but is now said to be out of danger.
As Adam Purinton, the alleged shooter yelled ‘get out of my country’ while firing multiple shots , Grillot ducked behind a table and waited for the gunman to run out of bullets. Later, he lunged at the shooter and tried to take the gun away from him, however, there was still one round left and he got himself shot through chest and arm.
“I guess I miscounted,” Grillot said in a video released by the University of Kansas Health System, as reported by Kansas City Star. “It was just, it wasn’t right, and I didn’t want the gentleman to potentially go after somebody else,” the Kansas City Star quoted him as saying.
Grilliot was particularly happy that the person he saved visited him. He said that Alok Madasani, who survived the shooting, visited him on Thursday in hospital. “It was the greatest thing…I can’t even describe it. Come to find out… his wife is five months pregnant,” he said.
Humbled over unending praise for his courage, Grillot said,”I was just doing what anyone would have done.It’s not about where he was from or his ethnicity, we are all humans, so I felt what was naturally right to do.”
“I was told I was incredibly lucky,” he said adding “Just very grateful”.
“It just put the biggest smile on my face,” Grillot said in the video. “I’m just very grateful that one of the gentlemen is fine and alive. It’s terrible what happened to his friend. But I think he was watching over us last night.”
While 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla, working at the Garmin headquarters in Olathe, was killed in the shooting, another Indian and his colleague Alok Madasani and Gilliotwas injured in the incident.
