Washington, April 3 (IANS) A Sikkimese native who was one of the seven people killed in a mass shooting at a US college when the alleged gunman stole his car was studying nursing and worked nights as a janitor.
Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, 38, was killed when gunman One Goh allegedly stole his car outside Oikos University Monday morning, the Oakland Tribune reported.
“I wish he had never come to this damn country,” his friend Sandy Close was cited as saying. “He was ill-fated.”
Davinder Kaur, a 19-year old Indian American student, was among the three wounded in the shooting.
Bhutia, who lived alone in San Francisco’s North Beach neighbourhood and worked nights cleaning terminals at the city’s airport, also was studying nursing at Oikos, a tiny Christian college. He had also worked in restaurants.
Nursing “would have been the perfect job for him,” said Close, the executive director of New America Media. “He was pretty much isolated because there is no Sikkimese community here.”
In North Beach, his Indian-American landlord at a residential hotel said Bhutia stuck to a schedule, working at nights at the airport, then driving to the nursing school in his Honda Accord for morning classes before returning home each day around 1.30 p.m.
When Bhutia was several hours late Monday afternoon, the landlord, Prem Singh, said he was worried and had tried to phone him several times.
“He’s a very nice guy, been here since October ’06 and I’ve never had any problems with him,” Singh said. The two enjoyed a long conversation just several days ago, he said.
Bhutia was very positive about the nursing programme at the Oakland college, Singh said.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
