A 21-year-old Houston student was found shot to death in her apartment after an armed robbery – and authorities have arrested a man in connection with the murder, police said.
Muna Pandey, a community college student from Nepal, was found with multiple gunshot wounds in her southwest Houston apartment around 5:30 p.m. Monday, Houston police said.
Employees at Pandey's apartment complex told authorities that they had received an anonymous call about a body in the apartment before calling 911. Paramedics pronounced Pandey dead at the scene.
On Wednesday, police released a surveillance photo of a man leaving Pandey's apartment on Saturday after an armed robbery occurred, according to KHOU.
Further investigations led authorities to identify the man as 52-year-old Bobby Sinh Shah, police said in a press release.
Shah was arrested during a traffic stop in northwest Houston on Wednesday evening and booked into the Harris County Jail on felony charges, police said.
Pandey, a student at Houston Community College, moved to Houston from Nepal in 2021, according to a GoFundMe fundraiser.
Drona Gautam of the Nepalese Association of Houston told the outlet that Pandey's mother tried to reach her for days before her body was discovered.
“Mom said her phone was always online. After Saturday night, the phone was offline,” Gautam said.
“She had three gunshot wounds and was lying on the bed with her head down,” Gautam said. “Hopefully the investigation will shed light on how this happened.”
Gautam said he was working with the Nepali consulate to make travel arrangements for Pandey's mother.
“It's very unfortunate for her because she is the only child. She is her mother's only child – so she is devastated,” Gautam told the outlet.
The fundraiser to finance Pandey's funeral and to repatriate her mother to Houston had raised more than $14,000 as of Thursday.
On Monday, Rice University student Andrea Rodriguez Avila was found shot to death in her dorm room in what appears to have been a murder-suicide.
Avila and a non-student man were found dead in their dorm room at Jones College. She was found with a note believed to have been written by the shooter, indicating that the two were romantically involved.
The name of the suspected shooter was not disclosed.
