UCLA shooter’s ‘kill list’ had dead Minnesota woman, 2 profs
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Students and faculty members were escorted by a police officer from the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, in Los Angeles.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Los Angeles Police officers searched the UCLA campus near the scene of a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles police chief says shooting was murder-suicide.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Los Angeles Police officers walked by the Mathematical Sciences Building on the UCLA campus after a fatal shooting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wednesday, in Los Angeles. Los Angeles police chief says shooting at UCLA was murder-suicide.
• Professor killed at UCLA was brilliant and kind, colleagues say
LOS ANGELES » A former UCLA graduate student killed a woman in Minnesota before carrying two semi-automatic pistols and a grudge back to Los Angeles, where he fatally shot a young professor he once called a mentor and then killed himself, police said Thursday.
The two victims were on a “kill list” that Mainak Sarkar had composed — as was a second professor authorities believe the gunman intended to kill but could not find Wednesday on the bustling campus, police Chief Charlie Beck said.
Authorities did not publicly identify the unharmed professor or the woman. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press that the woman on the list was Ashley Hasti, who documents show married the gunman in 2011.
Authorities pieced together the case as most classes resumed a day after thousands of students and staff members were locked down on the sprawling grounds of the UCLA. Its normally tranquil paths and hallways were swarmed by a small army of officers clad in body armor and wielding high-powered rifles.
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The investigation unfolded rapidly based on a note Sarkar left in the office where he killed professor William Klug. It mentioned the second professor, who also belonged to UCLA’s engineering faculty, and asked anyone who read it to check on Sarkar’s cat in St. Paul, Minnesota.
At Sarkar’s apartment, authorities found his list of three planned targets. Authorities checked the residence of the woman in the nearby town of Brooklyn Park and found her body.
The law enforcement official said Hasti was the name of the woman on Sarkar’s list. Beck said the woman named on the list was the victim; and a neighbor told AP that Hasti lived in the home with her father.
The official who said Hasti’s name was on the list was not authorized to publicly discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Gordy Aune Jr., who lives three doors away and is the neighborhood watch commander, said Hasti and her father were quiet and kept to themselves.
Records in Hennepin County, Minnesota, show Hasti married Sarkar in 2011, though more recently they had different residences and their current relationship was unclear.
Hasti’s uncle, Mark Fitzgibbons, told NBC News that the couple was together for only a couple of years and separated several years ago.
“He was a nice, quiet young man,” Fitzgibbons said. “I don’t know what happened to make him do this. I am just as shocked as everyone else.”
Sarkar had disparaged Klug online and the professor knew of his contempt, but police have not uncovered any death threats, Beck said. The writings contained “some harsh language, but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal,” he said.
A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar asserted that Klug “cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student” and “made me really sick.”
The blog continues: “Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy.”
Beck said it was Sarkar who was mentally unstable. The chief cited conversations in which UCLA officials told investigators the former Ph.D. student’s claims of stolen code are “a making of his own imagination.”
Sarkar, 38, and Klug, 39, were once close. In his 2013 dissertation about using engineering to understand the human heart, the student thanked the professor “for all his help and support. Thank you for being my mentor.”
Authorities believe Sarkar drove to Los Angeles in the past few days with two handguns he legally bought in Minnesota. With the weapons and ammunition Sarkar carried, “he could have caused many more fatalities than the one,” Beck said.
At Sarkar’s apartment building in St. Paul, the only people who would open their doors Thursday said they didn’t know their neighbor and that police had been there Wednesday night.
Sarkar’s LinkedIn page shows he obtained a master’s degree at Stanford University after graduating in 2000 from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering.
He most recently was listed as an engineering analyst at a Findlay, Ohio, company called Endurica. Company president Will Mars said Sarkar left in August 2014.
It’s unclear what he had been doing since.
Colleagues and friends described Klug as a kind, devoted family man and teacher who coached youth baseball in his adopted hometown of El Segundo and didn’t appear to have conflicts with anyone. He is survived by his wife and two children, a 9-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl.
“Bill was an absolutely wonderful man, just the nicest guy you would ever want to meet,” said Alan Garfinkel, a biology and physiology professor who worked with Klug to build a computer model of a “virtual heart” that researchers could use to test drugs without harming anyone.
Fellow mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Jeff Eldredge met Klug 17 years ago when they were doctoral students at Caltech, and they joined the UCLA faculty on the same day.
“I had looked forward to us growing into old grouchy professors together,” Eldredge said.
44 responses to “UCLA shooter’s ‘kill list’ had dead Minnesota woman, 2 profs”
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A Muslim/Islam follower. When you hear or read his fb phrase, “Your Enemy is my Enemy” that should ring a bell in your head. Allahu Akbar
The tragedy seems to be a very local and specific affair. Maybe the researcher resented the boss. Maybe he was unstable? We will find out more…
Mainak = Maniak (maniac)
true
The male victim, William Klug, may have been every bit the brilliant and all-around nice guy as described. He may also have been as conciliatory as others have implied. It does appear though, that whatever his talents and admirable qualities, they weren’t enough to placate an unstable young man not much younger than he was. The precursors to this tragedy seem to have simmered for quite a while. A pity the killer’s anger and fixation on Klug weren’t alarming enough to be dealt with until it was too late.
If you are going to straight play the Islam card without context or contemporary facts, know that Christianity is profoundly more lethal—Seven times more people have died in Christian wars: 113.8 million compared to the 16.4 million who died in Muslim wars.
There are more Christians, but only about 50% more, nothing like seven times more.
Western history is Eurocentric, so we know more about wars in Christian lands than in Muslim ones. But not for wars since 1900, and there the imbalance is even worse: 73.3 million compared to 4.4 millon – 17 times more dead in Christian wars.
Why make excuses for the Muslims? Have you recently seen any Christians killing anyone in religious wars?
Bosnian Serbs
The Second Chechen War can be classified in many ways as a religious conflict, particularly since Moscow in the first war and early insurgency deliberately targeted the secular moderates, leaving just the extremists Islamic radicals. Which is frighteningly what they are doing again in Syria.
Duuuhhh….The atrocities of Serb Christians against Bosnian Muslims, conservatively in the thousands, others say, in the tens of thousands. Sarge you might be one of the most unread and unsophisticated thinkers I have meet in a long time……
boola..Why are you making excuses for the Muslims? You haven’t answered the unsophisticated question.
Why because Muslims have nothing to do with this situation? The man in question was a Hindu. Nonetheless, many were quick to conflate, without question, research or thorough understanding that this must be related to Islam. That type of lazy and almost pugilistic thinking is an equal culprit of the problem.
Boolakanaka, why would you think Sarge knows the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu? Or maybe even a Buddhist?
See that wasn’t too difficult. Thank you.
advertiser1, I’m not sure why you think Sarge knows anything.
It’s true…e kala mai. I have provided Sarge with way too much leeway on his actual intellectual ability. If it’s not dogmatic idioms placed on a putative moral authority, it’s probably not in his wheelhouse…..
Mahalo for the leeway. You must have a huuge wheelhouse.
All wheelhouses are not created equal….
I agree with Boola’s acerbic comments. At times, he caN BE helpful.
What criteria are you employing to define and distinguish “Chrisian” wars from “Muslim” wars and where do you get your stats from?
By this measure, we should blame Christianity for every workplace violence act committed by Christians?
It appears to be an issue over intellectual property. And more evidence that the mentally ill shouldn’t be armed.
No, because Christians never commit violent acts. Only Muslims do. Don’t you read the comments here?
The NRA says that the mentally ill should be armed. Everyone should be, since the more guns there are in circulation, the safer we’ll all be. Don’t you read the comments here?
The NRA loves Obama. Gun sales have never been so good. More Americans can now protect themselves. Too bad the Prof wasn’t carrying
sarge22 – Right. Because in your mind, a civilian can correctly react and stop an assailant who bursts into a facility with the intention of murder. Exactly. That makes as much sense as anything else you write, so good for you!
Actually, sarge22, gun sales are not doing well. Nut cases went out during the 2008 election to stock up on firearms under the asinine belief that Obama would take their guns. They then, like fools, did it again in 2012. The old timers who actually understand the Constitution, unlike you, knew this was foolish. Compare the price of an AR-15 in 2006 and today. The massive glut from people who don’t understand the Constitution has caused a huge drop in prices and gun manufacturers are in financial trouble. Colt went bankrupt. Does that sound like major sales?
If anything, Obama screwed the firearms companies by compacting their sales into relatively small periods leaving them with crumbs for the rest. That’s what happens when their market is made up of legally illiterate fools who listen to chain emails without doing any independent research whatsoever.
March Sees Record Gun Sales
Latest figures indicate eleven straight record-setting months. The March record is the eleventh straight monthly record for background checks. The unprecedented streak, which began in May 2015, has included all-time records for both monthly and yearly sales. With 7,682,141 checks processed through the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, 2016 is currently on pace to set another all time yearly sales record.A National Increase
Gun sales have more than doubled in a decade, to about 15 million in 2013 from about seven million in 2002. More firearms are sold to residents in the United States than in any other country, according to Jurgen Brauer, a professor at Georgia Regents University.
Sarge, look at the data from 2008. You are cherry picking information to suit your needs. Furthermore, your data is exactly what I was saying. Low information fools are panic buying. AGAIN. Again, look at the price of a resell of a AR-15 in 2006 compared to today. You can do this online. You’d be lucky to break even. And that goes for other rifles and hand guns too. The market is absurdly saturated. And if you look at the actual sales over Obama’s tenure, you will see cyclical patterns, where compared to Bush’s era, there is far more stable purchasing patterns. Which leads me back to my point about nut cases who think Obama’s going to take their firearms.
It’s pretty clear you’ve never been to a gun show. Or haven’t in the past decade.
How is Obama good for firearm firms when he’s causing, indirectly people to disrupt their regular buying patterns resulting in very abnormal purchases? You won’t answer that. Obama is screwing them over by making it impossible to actually forecast and plan long term strategy. And like bonus depreciation, the purchases are being compacted rather than evenly spread out. Firms do not like periods of major feast and major famine.
What happens when the panic buying stops? Will Obama have been good to the firearms industry then? How will buyers resell their products when the market is saturated? You should actually go to a gun show to look at the prices and see just how much damage these people are doing to their own wealth.
Also, Sarge, you appear to be confusing background checks = sales from manufacture. Especially when multiple firms are reporting sales drops. Multiple firms with dropping sales yet massive spikes in background checks coupled with depressed prices means that there are a lot of resales at low prices, but not many new firearms being bought from the factory. You seem to have missed my point.
Sarge has a tad of difficulty parsing out data in an objective and meaningful way….
“http://cnsnews.com/commentary/cnsnewscom-staff/more-guns-less-gun-violence-between-1993-and-2013”. Well, I suppose there’s many different spins on the correlation between the amount of guns in America and the homicide rate. CNS has this one, which affirms what you intended as sarcasm.
klastri,
You’ve claimed you’re governed by facts and logical thinking. Please tell us where and when the NRA or any other gun owners rights group (they do exist as you must know) has stated people with serious mental illnesses – that pose a likelihood of committing violent behaviors including suicide – should be armed without qualification? And by the mentally ill, do you mean to include any and all people exhibiting mental disorders as categorized in the DSM? If so, then you’re painting with a pretty wide brush are you not?
You made a statement without extending any reservations so you must feel there’s a substantial body of facts to support it. The members of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership await your fact-based and logical reply.
Aren’t “they” all the same? Why bring up facts here?
What’s the shooters background? Where was this guy from?
if your posting here, you got internet access. Stop being lazy and go Google it
Yes, believe in the almighty Google. Goog is good, Goog is great We thank thee for our food, Amen.
All Hail Sergey Brin and Larry Page!
Western Bengal, India
Guy had a hit list. Two dead from that list.
IMAGINE…..”and no religion too”.
Sad but true, another murderer from those Middle Eastern countries, although technically India is not considered one, but y’all understand the reference.
Huh, He is from Asia….
I hope Jeremy Peschard realizes that it was yet another “gun free zone” mandated by the management, who then failed to protect the people they disarmed.
why make it an event with religious tones? It was a tragedy where it appears more than 2 people might have been killed. Let’s wait to find out more details before we start blaming anyone or anything as a group.
Well said.