A 21-year-old Houston college student was found shot to death in his apartment after an armed robbery, and authorities have arrested a man in connection to the murder, police said.
Muna Pandey, a community college student from Nepal, was found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in his southwest Houston apartment on Monday at about 5:30 p.m. Houston police said.
According to police, staff at Pandy's apartment building told authorities they received an anonymous call about a body inside the apartment before calling 911. Paramedics pronounced Pandy dead at the scene.
Police on Wednesday released CCTV photos of a man leaving Pandy's apartment on Saturday. KHOU reported It was an armed robbery.
After further investigation, the man was identified as Bobby Singh Shah, 52, police said in a press release.
Shah was arrested Wednesday evening in northwest Houston for a traffic stop and booked into the Harris County Jail on a murder charge, police said.
Pandi, a student at Houston Community College, moved to Houston from Nepal in 2021, according to a GoFundMe fundraiser.
Drona Gautam of the Houston Nepal Society told the outlet that Pandey's mother had been trying to contact her for several days before her body was discovered.
“My mother said that her phone was always online. After Saturday night, it went offline,” Gautam said.
“She had been shot around three times and was found lying head down on the bed,” Gautam said. “We hope that the investigation will provide some clues as to how this incident happened.”
Gautam said he was working with the Nepalese consulate to help Pandey's mother with travel arrangements.
“This is very unfortunate for her as she is an only child. She is her mother's only child so she is very sad,” Gautam told the outlet.
A fundraiser to cover Pandy's funeral expenses and to get his mother to Houston had raised more than $14,000 as of Thursday.
Rice University student Andrea Rodriguez Avila was found shot to death in her dorm room on Monday in an apparent murder-suicide.
Avila and a non-student man were found dead in their Jones University dorm room along with a note believed to have been written by the shooter, which stated that the two had been romantically involved.
The name of the shooting suspect has not been released.
