By IANS
New York : Police in Palm Bay, Florida, claim they are close to solving the murder of an Indian American convenience store owner last year.
Kiranbhai 'Ken' Narshinbai Patel was shot dead June 11 last year. He was behind the counter of The Beverage Store in Palm Bay, which he co-owned, when two masked men ran inside the store, demanded money and then shot him dead. A third man drove a getaway car.
Now, Palm Bay homicide detective Jess Suelter says police know the identity of the man who shot Patel dead, according to reports.
"We know the name of that person and we have other details on that person," the reports quoted Suelter as saying.
Though the police did not reveal the name of the suspected murderer, they said that they tracked down his identity through a gun they recovered in an unrelated arrest shortly after the June 11 incident.
They are now waiting for the owner of the gun, who was in jail when Patel was killed, to sit for a detailed interrogation. The man is currently out of jail and is residing in a Palm Bay locality.
Patel's family members have, meanwhile, appealed to the gun owner to help the police in their investigation.
"Please come forward and give that information to the police so they can solve the case and justice can be served," Pravin Patel, Ken Patel's uncle, said in a statement to the local media.
The victim's son Akshar, 18, also has a message to the killer: "People like this don't deserve to be out on the streets. All they do is ruin families."
Palm Bay in Brevard County, Florida, has a population of around 100,000, of which around 0.05 percent are Asians.