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Officials at the University of Missouri Kansas City crafted a false narrative after an international student was killed while working at an off-campus fast food restaurant in violation of the terms of his student visa, The Kansas City Star reported.
Sharath Koppu, a 24-year-old graduate student from India, was killed last July during an attempted robbery of the restaurant. In emails and other documents reviewed by the Star, UMKC officials discussed how to describe what Koppu was doing at the restaurant at the time of the armed robbery: “Let’s not emphasize where he worked. I doubt that he had a work authorization,” one UMKC official said. Instead, officials issued a statement saying he was at the restaurant “assisting family friends.”
UMKC officials told the Star they were unable to confirm with police that the student was working for pay, though the Star noted that they were willing to rely on hearsay in reporting that the student was assisting family friends. “Some School of Computing and Engineering faculty recalled hearing that the family that owned the restaurant had befriended the student,” UMKC’s vice chancellor for strategic marketing and communications, Anne Spenner, told the Star. “Given that we had no knowledge of whether he was an actual paid employee, we changed the wording to ‘assisting family friends.’”
Koppu's father in India and cousin in America both said he was working at the restaurant the day he was killed.
