The 38-year-old Indian man Mainik Sarkar who shot his professor William Klug of the UCLA (University of California-Los Angeles) and his former wife has been identified by the Los Angeles police. The two were married by a justice of peace in 2011, said Hasti’s grandmother, Jean Johnson.
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According to reports, detectives who arrived at Klug’s office after the shooting found two bodies and a note from Sarkar in which he had written down his address and asked someone to “check on my cat”.
Police discovered a “kill list” of intended victims at Sarkar’s home, which included another UCLA professor who was off-campus at the time of the shooting and was unharmed.
According to AP, Sarkar and Klug were once close.
Police are still putting together the full story of what caused Mainak Sarkar to go mental, but among the first discoveries that have been made is that the woman who was found shot to death in a Minnesota home was married to Sarkar but was separated from him. Sarkar killed himself before police could arrest him.
The police said that “a dispute over intellectual property” was tied to the UCLA shooting, which put the campus on lockdown for hours.
UCLA murder-suicide gunman Mainak Sarkar’s auto was found Friday in Culver City and police cordoned off the area surrounding the vehicle, the bomb squad conducted a search and Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic backed up on nearby roadways.
A woman was found dead inside the home from an apparent gunshot wound. He said police found an extra box of ammunition in his Minnesota home. Sarkar had a “kill list” with multiple names that in…
Sarkar’s motive for Hasti’s slaying remains unclear.
The woman killed by Sarkar is thought to be Ashley Hasti.
Preliminary ballistics testing shows the same weapon was used to kill Sarkar’s wife in Minnesota and the UCLA professor in his campus office, said Matt Blake, the LAPD chief of detectives.
In 2014 in a doctoral commencement booklet listing Klug as Sarkar’s advisor, he wrote to wrote to his victim/professor, “Thank you for being my mentor”. He was remembered as a kind and patient professor, which makes the fact he was targeted by an angry student unusual. Another UCLA professor, who hasn’t been identified, was also on that list. Beck says the other UCLA professor is OK.
However Klug’s friends rejected the claims and said it was “absolutely untrue” and “psychotic”.
New developments in the investigation into a murder-suicide on the campus of UCLA.
A police spokeswoman, Officer Jenny Houser, says the gunman was Mainak Sarkar. Photos on Twitter showed students stranded on their rooms, shielding doors with printers, tables and whatever article at their disposal, out of fear that a massive shooting will happen next (via CNN).
“Professor Klug’s name was on that list, as was another UCLA professor who was alright”, Beck told the station.
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Classes are resuming Thursday except for the engineering department, which will reopen next week.
