UW graduate from Greenfield, on business in Sri Lanka, missing after bombing at hotel





SRI LANKA -- Terrorist attacks took hundreds of lives in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, April 21, and FOX6 News learned of fears a Wisconsin native may have been one of the victims.

According to officials with the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Dieter Kowalski of Denver, Colorado was listed as missing.

The Cinnamon Grand was one of the hotels attacked by bombers on Easter Sunday.

Kowalski, 40, from Greenfield, graduated from the University of Wisconsin, according to court records and his Linked In account. He works for an education technology company and was reportedly in Sri Lanka on a business trip, according to a post on his Facebook page.

An email to his employer, Pearson, was not returned as of Sunday night.

FOX6 News was working to get in touch with his family.

Cinnamon Grand officials told FOX6's sister station KDVR in Denver Kowalski was a registered guest, and was missing, along with seven other guests. Four hotel staff members were killed in the hotel's main restaurant. Ten others were hurt.

Sri Lanka's foreign ministry has said at least 27 foreigners were among the more than 200 people killed. Other foreign victims were confirmed from the United States, Britain, China and Portugal. The nine bombings Sunday was the deadliest violence in the South Asian island country since the end of the civil war in 2009.