Issue date: 3/24/09 Section: News

Priya Darshini Muppavarapu, left, Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, center, and Anusha Anumola, right, were killed in a car accident early Saturday morning in Des Peres, Mo. The three women were graduate students at Eastern in the technology program. (Photo courtesy of Sue Songer)

Emergency vehicles respond to the scene of a crash at the intersection of Des Peres Road and Dougherty Ferry Road in Des Peres, Mo. (Photo courtesy of Millicent Michelle Hughes)

Shailendra Veerapaneni received a call from his brother in India asking if he had heard anything about a car crash involving his brother's daughter.

Shailendra Veerapaneni, of St. Charles, reassured his brother that it was probably a small crash.

He told his brother that she was likely sent to the hospital for procedure, but that it was probably nothing major.

"I'll go and look into it," Shailendra Veerapaneni said to his brother. "Don't worry."

He contacted the number given to his brother and talked to the doctors involved.

He was driving when he got the word that his niece and three others died in a car crash around 1:45 a.m. Saturday in Des Peres, Mo.

"Oh my God, it was a real shock," Shailendra Veerapaneni said.

He had to pull over into a parking lot.

Shailendra Veerapaneni is the uncle of Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, an Eastern graduate student in the computer technology program. Along with Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, the victims of the crash included Eastern graduate students Anusha Anumolu and Priya Darshini Muppavarapu, and Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni's cousin Satya Chinta, of Aurora, Ill.

The four and Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni's fiancé, Netish Adusumilli, of Ballwin, Mo., were on a weekend trip to St. Louis. It was Friday night, and the group was returning from a bowling alley after previously eating at a restaurant. Adusumilli was driving.

He made a right turn off Des Peres Road onto Dougherty Ferry Road when an off-duty suburban St. Louis police officer going the wrong way struck the right side of their vehicle, according to a Missouri State Highway Patrol crash report.

According to authorities, Christine L. Miller, 41, of Kirkwood, Mo., may have been drinking, reported The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol said there was no word on whether alcohol was or was not involved.Authorities are still conducting the investigation, and charges could be filed later this week, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

All four victims were pronounced dead at the scene at 2:15 a.m. Miller and Adusumilli were taken by ambulance to St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, Mo.

"No one wants to believe this has happened," Shailendra Veerapaneni said.

He said the past three days have been devastating.

"It has become a nightmare for us which is reality," he said.


A Return Home

Shailendra Veerapaneni, who was related to both Chinta and Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, went directly to St. Louis after the news was confirmed. The bodies will stay in St. Louis before being sent to Chicago and then to India.

Shailendra Veerapaneni was on campus Monday to retrieve the Eastern students' passports and documents to facilitate their return.

Eastern has arranged for a bus for friends of the victims to travel to St. Louis to pay their respects. The date and time are still tentative for the memorial trip. Shailendra Veerapaneni said the bodies would be returned to India by this weekend.

Most of the victims' immediate families reside in India, and will emain in India to meet the bodies. Relatives in the U.S. will be at St. Louis to see the bodies on the plane.

The estimated cost to transport four bodies to India is $60,000. An Indian group in St. Louis, The Talugu Association of North America, is accepting donations to help with the cost.

Online donations may be made by clicking here.

Chinta's mother and Muppavarapu's mother have still not been told of their childrens' deaths, Shailendra Veerapaneni said.

The latest he heard, he said, is that the doctors are advising not to tell the shocking news at this time.

"They'll slowly let them know," he said.

Chinta's mother has been told that her child is in the intensive care unit, Shailendra Veerapaneni said.

He said they would probably be told by Tuesday morning in India because the bodies will soon be returning home.

"It's really difficult," he said. "It has to be told."

Shailendra Veerapaneni said the news is so devastating because "they have come from such a far place to study."

"They were doing really good and all of a sudden this," he said. "I think it will take some time to come out of that shock."

Anitha is the only daughter in her family, and the only girl in her extended family.

"She is a darling for everyone, and now she is not there," Shailendra Veerapaneni said.

The last time he saw his niece was March 5, upon her return from India with her recent fiancé. She had plans to be married this May. Muppavarapu had also recently become engaged with plans to marry in May.


The Three Musketeers

Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, Muppavarapu and Anumolu were the best of friends, said Sue Songer, international student adviser.

"We often joked here in the (International Programs) office that they were the three musketeers because everywhere they would go together and they would come in the office and it would be a lot of laughing, friendliness," Songer said.

"Working on a university campus and being a woman myself, it's just a very special relationship of college girlfriends," she said. "It is a very close bond, and they were the epitome of college girlfriends."

As international student adviser, Songer provides support and assistance to international students. Songer knew the three victims since they transferred to Eastern in the fall of 2008 from Oklahoma City University.

"The loss we feel is very great," Songer said. "From the students' classmates to their faculty members to international programs to their work places … They had such hope and they were excellent students and it is so tragic we lost the three girls."

The victims from Eastern were three in a small tight-knit Indian community on campus. Songer said the university averages 150 international students each semester at Eastern, and of that, there are currently 42 Indian students.

"There's a huge outpouring of sorrow amongst the students, and it's hard to watch them be in so much pain," she said. "It's important that we pull together at a time like this and that's what we're trying to do to support and hold our group together."


A Friend's Memories

The three students were also all employed at Tower Dining where their smiling faces could often be seen.

Mary Brown, a full-time cook at Tower Dining, has known the three women since the beginning of last school year. While she never worked directly with them, she would stop and chat with them.

"We just got to be really good friends," she said.

In January, Brown went to visit them in January after hours. The three friends introduced Brown to Indian food and their ways and styles of eating and culture.

"We talked for about four or five hours about American culture and their culture and we had a great time," she said.

This past spring break, Brown took them to Walnut Point, north of Oakland.

"After we went to Walnut Point, we came back and they threw me a surprise birthday party with ice cream cake, and they showed me the tradition of cutting the cake and then you feed it to the next person and to the guest of honor," she said.

The three women were like sisters, Brown said.

"When I went to visit them, they treated me the same, just that same closeness." she said.

Brown found out about their deaths when her boss called her Sunday morning.

"I'm going to miss them very much because they made me feel very welcome," she said. "They made me feel a part of their group. I was basically one of them. They extended their friendship to me."

Brown said they always made the kitchen a little brighter.

"They were usually always smiling," she said.

Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, Brown said, was quiet at work, but once she was in private was outgoing and fun.

Brown described Anumolu as cheerful. She said she had a pet name for her laptop which was like a baby to her.

"She loved it," Brown said. "It was very special to her."

Muppavarapu was the tall one of the group, she said.

"She loved cake," Brown said. "I would ask, 'What kind of cake?' and she goes, 'Any kind of cake.'"

Brown said the three women were always smiling, always joking, but they always did their work.

"They will be sorely missed," she said.

Monday was the first day Tower Dining was open since the crash.

"I just kept looking for them to be here and they weren't," Brown said. "It seems really unreal."


Last Conversations

Sandra Sasidharan, a master of business administration student and an international student, also worked with Anumolu, Muppavarapu and Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni at Tower Dining.

"We had a good rapport with each other," she said. "I knew all of them. As the semester went on, it was going into a good friendship."

Sasidharan was one of the last ones to see the three before their deaths. She and the three were playing badminton in the Student Recreation Center Wednesday evening during break.

Sasidharan remembers the last conversations she had with each of the girls.

"(Anumolu) was saying she can't wait to go home to India, and she was saving up her money and everything to go home and visit with family and that's what she wanted to do," she said.

Her last talks with Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni and Muppavarapu were on their engagements, their marriage and how exciting things were going to be, Sasidharan said.

She learned of their deaths Saturday afternoon.

"It's unreal still to me," she said. "It's difficult not just for me but to all her friends all the other international students that had known them."

Sasidharan said the strange thing is the three were inseparable.

"They always wanted to work the same shift," she said. "They didn't want to work apart. They lived together. Now all three of them are gone."

Sasidharan said she cannot accept the fact that they are not going to be here.

"I still feel like tomorrow morning when I come to work I'm going to see them, but the reality is not," she said. "That's one of the things that we don't want to talk about, but the truth is they're not coming back."


Click here to read the previous story.


Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.

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