Ian Grillot, the man who intervened in the Kansas shooting at Austins Bar and Grill.

OLATHE, Kansas (Diya TV) — Ian Grillot wasn’t conscious to what a man was saying as he verbally assaulted two Indian men at a Kansas bar, but when Grillot saw a gun drawn, he immediately knew the two men were being targeted.

During a press conference Tuesday, Grillot stopped just short of labeling the Olathe slaying of Srinivas Kuchibhotla a “hate crime.” But “he went directly toward those men,” Grillot said of the shooter. “I can’t say it, but it seems pretty blatantly obvious what it was.”

The FBI, on the other hand, charged full steam ahead with a clarification of the shooting’s investigation Tuesday. It is being investigated as a hate crime:

President Donald Trump made mention of the shooting during his Tuesday joint address to Congress, almost heeding the calls of Grillot just hours earlier. “It would be nice for him to give some kind of closure,” Grillot said at the news conference. “I know people all around the world are waiting for something, some kind of statement.”

He spoke from a wheelchair at the University of Kansas hospital, where he is recovering from two gunshot wounds he suffered during the incident. His voice was hoarse because the bullet that went through his right hand and into his chest affected his vocal chords. Justin Green, the trauma doctor who treated Grillot, said the bullet traversed “the highest-priced real estate you have in your body short of the brain,” missing the heart, the trachea, the major blood vessels, the spine, the esophagus. One lung did collapse. Grillot was literally 1 centimeter away from death, Green said.

Grillot is being hailed worldwide as a hero for his intervention in the shooting, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian national employed at Garmin on a special work visa was killed in the shooting. He was 32. Kuchibhotla’s Garmin co-worker, 32-year-old Alok Madasani was also wounded in the incident.

“I still don’t view myself as a hero,” Grillot said. “I was just doing the right thing. We’re humans. We should stick up for each other. We’re all we got in this world.”

The suspected gunman, Navy veteran Adam Purinton, 51, was arrested early the next day at an Applebee’s in Clinton, Mo., after he allegedly told a bartender there that he had just shot two Iranian men. He is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shootings.

A GoFundMe page has been established to raise money for Grillot’s recovery, as of Wednesday afternoon its raised just over $450,000. “This whole racial divide and ethnic war that we have going on, it’s been going on too long,” he said. “Life is too short for anger and hate. There is no reason for it.”

Information from The Kansas City Star contributed to this report.