Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly Breaking news, an American suburb shattered by deadly shooting this Sunday, near Kansas City.

two people are dead after shots were fired at... we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.

Police say a man opened fire in the parking lot.

Heres what we know three people were killed theres no rhyme or reason to it Around 7:15, police responded to Austins Bar and Grill on reports of shots being fired.

asked them if their, quote, status was legal he also describes how shortly after he heard people saying quote, hes back and he has a gun.

And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air.

Gave proof through the night He did not deserve... a death like this.

I, especially, I was always concerned are we doing the right thing by staying in the United States of America I need an answer for everyone of them.

What is it thatthey going to do to stop this hate crime?

and the home of the brave.

So the day of the morning of April 13, Reat came bounding down the stairs.

And he's not the kind of kid that bounds, you know, he's not the kind of kid that leaps and bounds.

But he was super excited.

He'd been practicing for months.

He was really ready for this.

His plan was to sing “On The Street Where You Live ” from, my fair lady.

And then only a few minutes later, he said, Did you know that I might get to sing another song?

And I said, No, I didn't know that.

Why would they let you sing another song?

He said, I don't know.

It just said that I should be prepared in case they would give me another chance to sing something else.

And he said, Would you like me to sing it for you?

I said, Of course.

And he sang, “You're going to miss me when I'm Gone.

” And it was beautiful.

And I listened with an open heart.

And I had tears.

And I can see him in the kitchen.

I can't hear it anymore.

In my head.

But I can see it.

So I gave my dad a hug and said, thank you.

Those are my last words to my dad.

Thank you.

And I walked around the corner and I went to get my purse.

And I was about to walk out the door.

And I backed up and Reat was on my left.

And I leaned in and I kissed his right cheek.

And I said, Good luck.

I love you.

He said, I love you too, Mom.

And that's what happened before I found them.

I remember texting him saying, Hey, what time are you coming home?

Let's have some tea together.

And I never knew that he was going to a happy hour.

So I went home.

I saw that he did not reply me back.

And I was waiting.

And it was 7:00 or 7:30.

And he's still not home then.

I was like, okay, let me just have my dinner.

I don't think so.

He's going to be home by then.

And as my usual habit, I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw somebody sharing about that shooting.

Breaking News rig at 10:00, police hunting for a gunman after three people are shot at an Olathe bar right now, officers warning people living nearby to stay indoors.

The shooting happened at Austin's Bar and Grill near 151st & Mur-Len and asked them if their, quote, status was legal, told the victims they needed to, quote, “go back to the country they cam from ” before opening fire.

If you hear someone say something like the shooter said that night, you don't have to be silent.

In all likelihood, they may not come back with a gun, but you could be the one that turns around and says, No, that's not right.

Or goes and sits with the people who are being targeted and said, I'm here with you.

He he was kind of just mean-mugging and staring down Srinivas and, you know, I was trying not to pay too much attention to it, not trying to feed into it.

Eventually it got to a point.

I had seen one of my friends, you know, standing up and, you know, saying, hey, kind of what's going on here?

And then that's when I noticed and I kind of helped intervene and say, you know, this isn't the time nor place for it here, nor anywhere.

And, you know, it's kind of where I went to from there and then came to helped escort him out with the manager's assistance when he returned.

It wasn't anything anybody expected.

You know, we all just kind of figured he was drunk, he was going to go home, sleep it off.

And, you know, it was just, you know, a foolish act.

But unfortunately, it it didn't end there.

He did come back with the firearm.

I had went from trying to tackle the shooter to moving the gun out of my face.

And luckily I moved it just enough.

It went from my hand and then it went in my chest here, ricocheted off my collarbone and then ricocheted off my spine and then traversed back up.

And it's sitting in between my lung and my heart.

And, you know, that's that was, you know, really just the beginning.

It's it's something I still feel on a daily basis.

But then there's a whole ‘nother side of things that so oftentimes is gets overlooked.

And it's the mental side of things.

What should I do?

How should I call?

Who should I contact?

And I ended up calling Sakuruta, who is my my dear friend.

And I was like, I was going on my rant and like, you know, this is what I hate the most.

But then they're not lifting the phone and Ripte And then it was like, something is fishy.

And then she goes into reading more about it.

Sunayana it says three colored men racial and you know right?

how your heart beat is like like raising up and then you're trying to be positive but you you your brain is going in all different directions.

Chaos and panic.

I thought I had a shooting, an air rifle or something.

All of a sudden they shot at me.

A tragedy unfolds in Overland Park as a gunman opened fire at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom Assisted Living Center just blocks apart.

Three are dead tonight, including a 14 year old high school student.

I ran to my dad's body screaming.

What happened?

What happened to no one?

No one?

I didn't see any other humans.

I only saw my dad's body lying there next to the truck.

And as I got close, I was about 2 to 3 feet away and it was very apparent that he was deceased.

And logically, I knew I could not do anything for him.

But that didn't stop me from wanting to help or wanting to lean in and touch him.

But as I went to lean in, to touch him or to hold him in some way, I felt a pressure against me.

I felt somebody or something pushing me back.

And I heard the words and they were so loud and so clear.

Your father's in heaven.

Go find.

Reat.

And it was calming.

And for whatever reason, I walked around the track.

I just felt led.

And I walked around the truck and I found Reat.

And he was in the arms of two men.

They were holding him.

I didn't understand that he was lifeless.

And then I heard those words again.

Your father's in heaven.

Go find Reat when we were at the hospital.

And then it was ten in the night.

Then my friend, I saw a car pulling into the driveway and I rushed and opened the door and opened the garage doors thinking it might be Srinu, but it wasnt Srivus car.

And he walked in and he had a sticker of the hospital sticker.

And looking at him, I realized and I said Srinu was there her.

And he nodded his head.

And then I was like, Is he the one who's critically injured?

And I got another nod.

I was like, Please take me.

I informed my family on my way to the hospital.

I called my sister, my middle sister, and I said, They're saying Srinu is no more.

So while we were at the hospital, we were dealing with the fact that we lost my dad and lost our 14 year old son and we have our 12 year old son.

And then they tell us that Reat, even though he's had organ donation and planned to be an organ donor and we were authorizing it, they originally said he can't be an organ donor.

So you just can't get any lower than that.

Oh, I have, as I've said it so many times, but every time I still have a blush on my face, I. I have to still see it.

So it all happened that when I graduated in 2006 May, and I was in the pursuit of coming to the United States and to seek my master's degree.

And at that time in India, Orkut, which is similar to a Facebook, was very popular among the kids.

So I was chatting with my best friend's brother and what's happening.

So I was like, Yeah, I've applied.

I'm trying to come for the spring semester and these are the universities that have applied.

And one of the universities I had applied for was the University of Texas, El Paso.

One of my my best friend's sister is Sunayanas bestfriend and and he actually recommended my name so that I could go forward with universities to come to US.

And fortunately, unfortunately, I don't know, but my name was in the first and then he would do other names and my friends Srinus was the first name and that's the destiny and that's how we met.

And slowly we chatted.

We chatted for hours together all the time, the friends and everything.

I used to be up in the night sneaking away from my parents and doing all of that.

And so once I got my visa, it was a huge relief for both of us.

And then he was visiting India for the first time after coming here in 2005 August, and so that's when we first met in person.

But by then we had feelings for each other.

So it was in October 2012 that we got married.

We got married back home.

What my dad helped me understand in life was to kind of go for it was to never be afraid to fail.

We talked very easily with one another.

He was a great educator, so very smart and very caring and giving.

So he was a physician.

He he cared for other people.

Yeah, my dad loved life.

My dad loved people and he loved caring for people.

They they weren't the type of grandparents that might just feed their grandchild candy and then walk away or something like that.

They bathed our kids and all of their grandkids and fed them dinner and had them over for the night and went to their activities, etc.

So they were very involved.

He's one of the rarest finds.

He pushed me out of my comfort zones and he was to me as a friend more than as a husband.

He was literally my 9-1-1.

That's how important he was in my life because he was the only family I had.

We were for each other Whenever he visited India, he made sure that all of her family members that Sunayana valued.

He gave equal attention like you are my family, to how much you are important to Sunayana.

You're equally that valuable to me.

And then there's Reat and he is my firstborn, so he's my firstborn son and all that that goes with it.

Reat had great talent, so by the time he was three and four years old, he had Eric Carle books memorized and he could just say them verbatim, and then he would act them out.

He was had a smile that lit up a room and twinkling eyes and and dimples just like mine.

But he loved people.

He loved friends and meeting people.

He had a lot of people that really knew who he was because he opened his heart to them really weeks and a year or two after when I couldn't wear eye makeup, I had to kind of learn how to eat again.

I had to force myself to exercise.

I had to push myself through grief.

And I questioned God after all the things that I have done and all the things that my dad as a physician and my 14 year old son who's completely innocent in everything, how did this happen?

The person who was literally everything for me, who was my power rock, was my st Was my- who cared for me so much.

And to find him lifeless and to to have him physically not being around me was so much to process.

And so I took that decision that we will be taking him back home so that he would be given a farewell in a proper way amongst all the loved ones.

So the whole funeral, the whole journey was a journey of filled with burden deep inside and with the flow of all of these emotions.

And so I was very angry, very angry at God.

And I have to say again that God can handle the anger.

I could yell at God, I could scream at God, I could write really bad things to God, and I wasn't going to hurt God.

But here's where God showed up, because some people will say, Well, where was your God?

Right?

Where was he?

He didn't save you.

He didn't he didn't save your dad.

He didn't save your son.

So where God was, was and all the people, all the humans who showed up, one of the things that I do remember the most, frankly, is the community response.

And it was just so incredible and overwhelming.

At the end of the day, I was proud of Kansas City.

I'm a lifelong Kansas Citian, and they showed up that part of this I was very proud of as a reporter who's covered race, who's covered white supremacy, it was mortifyi It was a senseless, senseless hate crime.

And the fact that it was a hate crime and I'm white and I'm Christian, I have a bigger responsibility to explain to people that hate has no place because it will touch everybody.

I came to this country, right?

With so much of hopes and dreams, and America was slowly making it happen for me.

I met the love of my life.

We got married.

We were building our house together.

We were in the process of starting and having a family growing together and filled with so much more dreams.

And suddenly that came down, crashing.

And my instant reaction obviously was, I'm going to leave this country.

And then I heard of those words, get out of my country and that the shooter said this.

I was like, I can't leave.

I can't let the shooter win And that's how my journey began.

The new journey of discovering and how we can bring all of us together.

I knew that a foundation needed to happen from my experience in wealth management, and we went to the Greater Kansas City community Foundation.

So community foundations are awesome and we started the Faith Always Wins Foundation and we started an event and the event was called Seven Days.

The themes are love, discover, others connect.

You go onward.

Those are the seven days themes and the colors and the branding.

It's all very fun and it's about kindness.

A movement has started or small acts of kindness grow into a wave of change.

It's called seven Days, with each day featuring a different mission.

Day one love day to discover.

Day three others.

Day four connect.

Day five you.

Day six, go and day seven onward.

So we do operate year round, but we have a Kindness Youth Leadership Program.

Our goal is for our teaching, our teachings to reach high schoolers and middle schoolers so that they can make good choices at that moment in time.

Maybe take it back to their home, take it into their youth groups, take it into their schools, and be kindness influencers.

As I process things and what was coming to me and what needs to be done.

And one of those questions was like, what led the shooter to do?

And it to me it was more because of ignorance and lack of information.

And my instinct was what can be done forever welcome is that they raised funds for immigrants who come into the United States and they work to help them feel welcome.

So she has created an educational platform and a resource guide that's you could call it diversity, equity, inclusion, but it's a it's a very specific educational resource guide that she presents and provides.

And that's something that's important to forever welcome so that they do welcome immigrants and that they not only welcome immigrants, but they help educate those of us who don't know anything about immigration.

As the famous saying goes, prevention is better than cure.

We need to work on preventing ourselves from going through these meaningless acts and stop somebody from going through the pain the relationships gained after a tragedy like this.

It's a very bittersweet thing.

I would love nothing more than to have never met Sunayana, because that would mean she still has her husband.

But on the flip side of that token, I am incredibly blessed to have got to know this.

And I'm just not just as a friend, but as a sister.

And she's helped me in a lot of ways that she may not never understand or that I could put into words the decision to make Sunayana the godmother of my child.

It was it was really an easy choice for what she had done for me and what she has been doing for the community, not just the Indian community, but for all people that are, you know, wrongfully persecuted, that everybody is welcome.

And to me, what what better role model than somebody who has faced adversity dead center in the face and said, I will not back down?

I think my introduction to her was was after the tragedy, a mutual contact.

I was formally introduced to her through email and I met her for the first time at Yayas and it started there and in the at the very first meeting, she said, I am your sister for life.

I will be with you.

And we are in this journey together and you have to be that what you're going through emotions wise, it's normal and that's okay to have it.

You if you you can grieve the way you want to grieve and to have that comfort in that.

And I think that is what is still making me continue in this journey, though it's been really hard.

Yeah, it's never it's never not hard.

It's never not hard.

And it's certainly helpful to have someone to work on the journey with.

We lost different people, but we lost to the same reason of hate.

And so I could look up to her in many ways of how she was handling this and how she was God taking this forward and becoming this beacon of hope in carrying a mission forward.

And I had that similar passion in Me too.

So if I have to be on this journey, this is how I have to do it.

And this is my mentor, you for that.

And so and that's what defines our unique bond.

And it's been a wonderful journey, though.

It started on a painful way.

It's it's been a wonderful journey.

I think they have a bond that no one else can really understand.

They have each suffered incredible loss for reasons of hate.

What's really special, though, is how each woman has grown from that.