21-year-old Savitha Shan was a superstar student of the University of Texas, set to graduate in May 2026. She was doing two majors, one in Economics and the other in management information systems. But as she was gunned down by a shooter on West Sixth Street in Austin, her ethnicity became the main talking point on social media as many wondered what Shan was doing in Texas. “If only she stayed in the safety of India she would still be alive,” one hate comment read. “No, in india she would have faced a slow stinky de@th, electrocuted by live wire/ falling in a pothole filled with sewage water / dog bites ..these are the ways she could have dièd here. At least she went away in a second, that’s better,” another wrote.Savitha Sanmugasundram was born in America. She was also the president of the university’s Indian Students Association and a volunteer for Austin’s Tamil Sangam.The other victim of the shooting was Ryder Harringdon. The vile comments came in reply to sports writer Shehan Jeyarajah’s post where he wrote: Two college students, two Texans, whose lives had just started. So awful.“Just because I can speak to it, really hard to feel just how close Savitha’s death feels. Plan II, Indian Student Association, celebrating a night out on 6th Street. I lived that with so many friends. There’s such a vibrant South Asian population at UT. My heart hurts for them,” Jeyarajah continued. Some social media users commented that they could not see two Texans but one Texan and another Indian etc. “Grow up in Austin, work hard, do everything right, get into the top program at one of the best universities in the world, thrive, be the completely innocent victim of a mass shooting, and even *that’s* not enough for people to stop disrespecting you. Even death isn’t enough,” Shehan himself called out the trolls.Texas Republican Brandon Gill, a vocal critic of immigration, said Savitha grew up in Austin and her killer should have never been allowed to enter the US. ‘Rest in power Ryder and Savitha,” Indian-origin Texas politician Burt Thakur posted. “Two bright lights snuffed by a terrorist,” Thakur wrote.
