Prashanth Goinaka, a 28-year-old male student from India, had only been in the United States for a couple of months, pursuing his dream of an MBA at the International Technological University in California. To support himself, he had recently taken a part-time job at the SK Foods store in Oklahoma City. Merely days into his new job, on a Sunday evening in March 2010, his life was tragically cut short. Two men entered the convenience store under the guise of being customers.
In a swift and brutal act of violence, they robbed the store of its cash and then fatally shot Prashanth.
The initial investigation by the Oklahoma City Police Department was unfortunately met with few leads. Surveillance footage from the store captured the robbery and shooting, providing a glimpse of the assailants, but their identities remained a mystery. The case was described as a homicide, and the suspects were identified as two Black men. For years, the investigation stalled, and the case grew cold, leaving Prashanth's family in India without answers or justice for their son's murder. The promising young student, who was also a talented dancer and had even appeared as a junior artist in some films, was remembered by his family as a driven individual who had briefly joined the merchant navy before coming to the U.S. to further his education.
After more than a decade of silence, a significant breakthrough finally occurred in the case. In 2023, it was announced that a suspect had been identified through a fingerprint that was lifted from a coin tray at the crime scene. The fingerprint was matched in 2021 to Daryl Brown, a man already incarcerated and serving a sentence for a double murder. However, due to a reporting error, this crucial information was not relayed to the cold case detectives until two years later. Following this discovery, Oklahoma County prosecutors charged Brown with one count of murder in connection with Prashanth Goinaka's death. While one suspect was finally facing charges for the long-unsolved murder, it was reported that the other two individuals involved in the robbery and shooting had not yet been identified. Authorities were also making efforts to locate Prashanth's family to inform them of the long-awaited development in his case.
