Man Dies in Convenience Store Robbery Shooting in U.S.

A 53-year-old Indian-origin man was killed by two attackers in Ohio’s Fairfield when they robbed a convenience store earlier this week. Karunakar Karengle was working at Jiffy Convenience Mart on Camelot Drive when he was shot.

The police have not arrested anyone yet and store owners near the area are worried about their safety, PTI reported. Fairfield Fire Department first responders brought Karengle to the UC West Chester Hospital where he succumbed to injuries on Dec. 15.

No relatives of the store worker are in the area, Lt Ken Gerold of Fairfield police told the media. The Indian man’s identity was withheld until his family in India was informed about the incident that took place at 10 pm on Dec. 11.

“I’m sorry that it happened,” Kim Cannon, who works across the street from where Karengle was employed, said, according to the report. “It scares me even more knowing that the guys, or whoever it was, were parked behindour building and I was working that night and could have walked out. It was shocking to hear that somebody was actually killed.”

There was no description available for the attackers since they wore hoodies.

This is the latest attack in a spate of recent such incidents against Indian-origin persons in the United States. Earlier this month, an Indian national studying in Chicago was shot in the face by an unidentified assailant. Mohammad Akbar, a 30-year-old student hailing from Hyderabad, was shot in his right cheek on Dec. 6. He was studying for a postgraduate degree in computer systems networking and telecommunications from DeVry University in Chicago.

In February, a software engineer in Kansas was fatally shot by a U.S. navy veteran. The American shooter pleaded not guilty to the crime.

According to the FBI crime statistics, racial attacks have increased in the United States and so has gun violence. A total of 58,491 incidents of gun violence were reported across the country in 2017, according to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a not-for-profit corporation providing public access to gun-related violence. South Asian groups have criticized the FBI statistics for not representing the complete extent of racial attacks against their community.