The victims of Cincinnati had no known connection with a gunman

The bereaved are holding hands on Friday, September 7, 2018 at the Cincinnati Fountain Square, near the fatal shooting spot on Thursday. The suspect Omar Enrique Santa Perez was killed by police officers. (AP Photo / John Minchillo)

CINCINNATI – The three people shot in the lobby of a Cincinnati office building had no apparent connection to the shooter.

One of them was a long-time construction worker who worked in the building. Another moved to Cincinnati a year ago to find a better job at Fifth Third Bancorp, the youngest victim, 25, was an Indian engineer.

Two other people who were shot at and hospitalized on Saturday did not work every day, but they were there for meetings on Thursday morning.

The police still do not know why 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez began shooting randomly inside the bank's headquarters. The investigators claim that he had never worked in the building or had a known association with him.

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BUILD THIS CITY

Richard Newcomer was a supervisor for Gilbane Building Co. for the last three years and has spent much of his life on construction projects in Cincinnati.

The 64-year-old supervised the work on the third floor of the building, the company said.

"He built this city," Mayor John Cranley said Friday after speaking to Newcomer's wife. "The buildings where we live and work, he helped build, he loved the city."

Newcomer's brother said in a statement that "Rick and the other affected people were in the right place at the wrong time."

"Words can not describe what I'm sure we all feel," Larry Newcomer said. "Rick was a loving family man to have fun … always fast with a joke."

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BIG DREAMS

Prudhvi Kandepi arrived in the United States four years ago after graduating from university and earned a master's degree in computer engineering from the University of California at Riverside.

He worked as a consultant for the bank.

"He worked very hard to be where he was a few days ago," said Yash Yeddulapalli, the roommate of Kandepi University, at The Cincinnati Enquirer. "He had a lot of career goals and he wanted to support his family."

Kandepi, 25, was just with his college friends during the Labor Day weekend during a trip that he organized at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. His friends said that he always wanted to make people happy.

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Best opportunity

A year ago, Luis Calderon left his family in Miami for a senior position at the bank, but he was trying to figure out how to get back to Florida, his wife said.

Calderon, 48, was born in the United States, but grew up in Colombia. He moved to Cincinnati about a year ago because he thought it would benefit his two teenage children, said Ana Maria Calderon at The Enquirer.

"To help us more, he had a good job offer and it was a really hard decision to make because he was leaving everything behind," she said.

He wanted to return to his children in about a year after saving enough money.