Vamshi Reddy’s Body To Be Brought To Warangal On Friday 

Hyderabad: The body of Mamidala Vamshi Reddy, who was shot dead by a drug-addict in the US last week, will be brought to Warangal on Friday. Vamsi belongs to Vangapahad village near Warangal. He did his masters and was doing a part-time job in Milpatas, a small suburban city in the USA.

Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya coordinated with the External Affairs ministry and with the help of Sushma Swaraj, the body is being transported without further delay.

Two days before he was shot to death in the garage of a Milpitas apartment building, Vamshi spoke on the phone with his family and told them the situation was not encouraging in the US.

A bright student who had graduated from a JNTU college in Hyderabad, the handsome 27-year-old had gotten a degree in December from Silicon Valley University, which often sends graduates to work for tech companies.

But he had found no permanent job and told his father that he was worried that the political climate in America would not help his career. His father told him to return to India if he couldn’t find the right work.

Instead, Mamidala wound up a victim, a man who fit the sad cliche of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the fateful night, he returned from a part-time job at a nearby store only to be killed in the garage of the Ilara Apartments at 1201 S. Main St.

The Mercury News, a local news portal reports:

Because the Milpitas police have released few details, we don’t know precisely what happened in the garage of the upscale Ilara, where rents generally are $2500 and above.

But the Indian External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, quoting a report from the Indian consulate in San Francisco, tweeted that Mamidala was shot by a drug addict who was in turn captured. Tuesday evening, police identified the suspect as Stuart Baronngaue, 30, of Fremont, who had an outstanding felony warrant for parole violation.
He
was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail on charges of murder, robbery, felony evasion, and his outstanding warrant.

Milpitas police officers said they got a call around 10:45 p.m. about a single car crash. According to police, a man got out of a black Mitsubishi Galant sedan, ran towards the apartments and then stole a car from a woman at gunpoint. As they approached the Ilara, the officers reported hearing a shot and saw a car speeding away. Inside, they found Mamidala suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Within short order, the suspected shooter was stopped at Abel Street and Serra Way, a little more than a mile away.

Was Mamidala targeted by the shooter? Did he come to the assistance of the woman? Was he still in his car? The official version provided no answers. And I couldn’t get more Tuesday from the cops.

That has not stopped a rambunctious Indian press from speculating that this was a hate crime. "In what can be seen as a fallout of the POTUS Trump’s hate Videshi (foreigners) campaign, a youth from Warangal was shot dead by unidentified white American in California," began one story in the Sakshi Post.

That one is almost certainly untrue. For starters, police did not charge the suspect with a hate crime. Milpitas is a small suburban city that has relatively few homicides. Whatever the president's flaws, the shooting cannot be laid at Donald Trump's feet.

But there is something about a young immigrant being killed that chills me. Leaving family and friends behind, a student comes to America because of hope. A few quick seconds can destroy that aspiration forever.

I was around in 1989, when 16-year-old Japanese student Ai Toyoshima was found in a central San Jose schoolyard, bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to the spine.

In that case, her killer was near the end of a long and brutal crime spree. But that made little difference to worried Japanese parents who sent their children to America. At the penalty phase of her killer's trial, Ai Toyoshima’s father, Shintano Toyoshima, testified through an interpreter.

"One more time I want to embrace her," he said.

Vamshi Mamidala's parents — modest farmers in central India — would say the same.