Andhra Pradesh-born professor Gopi Podilla, chairman of the biological sciences department at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and two of his colleagues Maria Davis and Adriel Johnson, both associate professors, were allegedly killed by 44-year-old Amy Bishop on Friday.
Though the police did not give the reason behind the incident, local television WAFF, citing authorities, said Bishop shot at her colleagues during a faculty meeting after learning that she would not be granted tenure. Her husband, James Anderson, was detained and questioned by the police but has not been charged.
A day after the incident, United States media reported that Bishop, who had just months left as a teacher at the University of Alamba, killed her teenage brother, Seth Bishop, with a shotgun at their Massachusetts home on December 6, 1986.
She was never charged with that shooting, which the police ruled accidental at the time, the “Boston Globe” reported.
It quoted a local police chief and the Norfolk district attorney’s office giving differing accounts of the incident that killed Seth Bishop at the siblings’ Braintree home, raising questions about the handling of the case.
The Braintree town’s current chief, Paul H Frazier, said the police were prepared to arrest and charge Amy immediately after the shooting but were ordered to release her by the chief at the time, who called the death accidental.
