27-year-old Indian woman among 9 shot dead in US

Indian-origin engineer Aishwarya Thatikonda, 27, was among the nine people killed when a gunman in the US opened fire at shoppers in a Dallas mall on Saturday, according to a report in the New York Post.

Aishwarya, daughter of a district judge in Ranga Reddy district court in India, worked as a project engineer at Perfect General Contractors LLC in Dallas.

Aishwarya was shopping with a friend when they were shot by gunman Mauricio Garcia at the Allen Premium Outlets in Dallas, the New York Post newspaper reported.

She was an engineer living and working in Texas while her family was in India. Her friend, who was not identified, was injured but is currently in stable condition at the hospital, the paper said.

A family representative confirmed to the WFAA television station that Thatikonda was also among the dead in the tragic shooting.

Ashwariya was a resident of Saroornagar in Hyderabad.  She did her civil engineering from a college in Hyderabad and completed her masters in the US after which she had been working there for more than two years.

“The family got the information about (her death) on Sunday. They are in shock. They have been told that efforts were being made to send her body by Wednesday,” the judge’s friend told WFAA television.

Thatikonda’s family is planning to bring her body back to India, it added.

The assailant, Mauricio Garcia, was shot dead by a police officer who rushed to the spot on hearing the gunfire.