27-Year-Old Hyderabad Woman Among 9 Killed In Mass Shooting At US Mall
A 27-year-old Indian-origin engineer working in the US as a project engineer was among the nine people killed when a gun-wielding man opened fire at shoppers outside a mall in the Dallas area in the US on Saturday.
Aishwarya Thatikonda, of McKinney, was shopping with a friend when Mauricio Garcia, the 33-year-old gunman, shot them at the Allen Premium Outlets in Dallas, the New York Post reported.
Gunman acted alone and killed 9
The shooting started around 3:30 pm on Saturday as crowds of shoppers filled the outdoor mall. The shooting killed nine people before the gunman was shot dead by a police officer.
Brian E Harvey, the chief of police in Allen, Texas, said at a news conference on Saturday night that the gunman acted alone. A police officer, who was on another assignment at the mall at the time of the shooting, heard gunfire, rushed towards it, and killed the shooter.
A Dallas home linked to the gunman's parents was searched by police Saturday night after the massacre, and officials also scoured a motel where the shooter had booked an extended stay, law-enforcement sources told a local media outlet.
In a statement about the shooting, the mall said they were "horrified by the senseless tragedy" at Allen Premium Outlets and expressed outrage over ''the violence that continues to plague" the United States.
Woman had spoken to family before incident
A family representative confirmed to the WFAA television station that Aishwarya was also among the dead from the senseless gun violence. Her friend, who was not identified, was reportedly injured but is in stable condition at the hospital.
Aishwarya, the daughter of a district judge in Ranga Reddy district court in India, worked as a project engineer at Perfect General Contractors LLC.
She had spoken to her family members before the incident on Saturday, and when they called her back after learning about the shooting, they did not get any response, according to the judge's friend.
"The family got the information about (her death) on Sunday. They are in shock. They have been told that efforts were being made to send her body by Wednesday," the judge's friend said.
Victim had been working in Dallas for two years
Aishwarya did her civil engineering at a college in Hyderabad, India and completed her masters in the US, after which she had worked there for more than two years. She was working in Texas while her family was in India.
After learning about the death of Aishwarya in the shooting incident, the Consulate General of India in Houston expressed condolences to her family and stated that they were closely monitoring the situation and rendering all possible assistance.
Second-deadliest shooting of the year
Saturday's tragedy occurred just a couple of weeks before the first anniversary of the Uvalle, Texas, School massacre when 19 children and two adults were killed by a gunman at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.
It comes just days after a gunman became enraged during a visit to an Atlanta medical facility. He allegedly shot dead at least one person with a handgun and injured four others before he was caught hours later.
Saturday's incident is the country's second-deadliest shooting of the year, after the Monterey Park, California, massacre in which a gunman killed 11 people in a ballroom on January 21.
Texas has second-largest Indian-American population
According to US Census Bureau, Texas has the second-largest Indian-American population in the US as of 2020. In 2010, there were 230,842 Indian Americans in Texas, making up 0.9 per cent of the population.
As per data shared by Open Doors, about half of the Indian students are pursuing higher education in six US states including New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Arizona. Texas had 19,382 Indian students in 2021.
(With inputs from agencies)
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