14-year-old boy charged in South Side slaying, robbery of grad student from India

First-degree murder charges have been filed against a 14-year-old boy for a shooting in a South Side Walmart parking lot that killed a graduate student from India and seriously wounded his roommate earlier this year.

The boy was arrested Monday by the Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force on the Far South Side. He is charged with two counts of murder and one count of armed robbery in the death of Devasish Nandepu, 23, who had been in Chicago less than two weeks when he was killed at the end of January.

Chicago police said he was one of the people who pulled up to Nandepu and two roommates in the 8400 block of South Holland Avenue on Jan. 22. One of the roommates, Lakshman Gogada, said two people in masks jumped out and demanded the men’s cash and phones.

One of the robbers opened fire even as the three men tried to hand over their cash — a total of about $6, said Gogada, who grabbed his phone and called 911 while tending to his wounded friends.

Nandepu died hours later at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. His 22-year-old roommate recovered from his injuries and has returned to India. Nandepu’s family came to the United States to retrieve his body.

Nandepu had enrolled in computer science classes at Governors State University in the south suburbs and had hoped to one day work for a large Silicon Valley company.