White House condemns Kansas killing as ‘racially motivated hatred’

Spokesperson Sarah Sanders addresses the shooting as hate crime, for the first time 

A White House spokesperson on Tuesday condemned the hate motivated Kansas shootings that left one Indian engineer dead and two others, one Indian and one American, injured.

“As more facts come to light and it begins to look like this was an act of racially motivated hatred,” the White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said. “I want to reiterate the President condemns these attacks in the strongest terms. They have no place in our country.”

This is the first time that the White House has addressed the Kansas shootings directly. Earlier, when Press Secretary Sean Spicer mentioned the Kansas killing, he did not acknowledge it as a hate crime. Spicer mentioned the incident as “disturbing”.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that was mentioned in the speech tonight,” Sanders added, referring to President Trump’s first address to a Joint Session of Congress, on Tuesday night.

On February 22, an intoxicated US Navy veteran Adam Purinton killed Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, in hate crime. Two others, Alok Madasani, 32, and Ian Grillot, 24, also got injured during the shooting.

It is pertinent to mention the White House comments come after several prominent Americans and news media questioned President Trump’s silence on the gruesome incident. Sunayana Dumala, Kuchibhotla’s wife had urged the US government to respond to the killing and ensure justice to her dead husband.