Indian gunman Mainak Sarkar killed his wife, drove 3200 km to kill professor
Los Angeles: The Indian man, who killed a UCLA professor and subsequently committed suicide in the varsity campus, left a "kill list" at his Minnesota home that led authorities to find a woman's body, Police
Los Angeles: The Indian man, who killed a UCLA professor and subsequently committed suicide in the varsity campus, left a "kill list" at his Minnesota home that led authorities to find a woman's body,
The woman was found shot dead in her home in a nearby Minnesota town, Police chief Charlie Beck said on Thursday but he refused to release woman's name.The other professor in the list is safe.
However, local news reports in Minnesota said Mainak Sarkar, 38, killed his wife Ashley Hasti before embarking on a 2,000-mile (3,220-kilometer) journey to Los Angeles in his car to shoot his former professor William Klug.
According to CBS Minneapolis, they were married in 2011. It was unclear if the couple were still married. At the time of her death, the 31-year-old Hasti was a resident physician at the University of Minnesota.
According to Police, Sarkar had plans to kill another UCLA faculty member, but could not do so as he was not able to find him.The faculty member, whose name was not revealed by police, is safe.
Sarkar drove to Los Angeles from Minnesota with two guns and killed Professor Bill Klug before taking his own life on Wednesday.
When authorities searched Sarkar's Minnesota home, they found a "kill list" with the names of Klug, another UCLA professor and a woman, Beck said.
An alumunus of IIT Kharagpur, Sarkar also briefly worked with Infosys, according to his Linkedin profile.
The second professor is reported on the 'Kill List' to be safe but no details were offered by the police about the dead woman — her identity, her nationality or when she was killed and where.
The shooting prompted a complete lockdown of the campus and the deployment of hundreds of police officers and federal agents.
Sarkar was working on a computer code which he hoped would have launched a famous career. But perhaps, it got all dashed by ego battles between Sarkar and Klug, with the 39-year-old Klug perhaps crushing Sarkar’s ideas and potential, delaying his graduation.
Sarkar is listed on a UCLA website as a member of a computational biomechanics research group run by Klug, a professor of mechanical engineering.
A blog post that appears to be written by Sarkar calls Klug a "sick guy." In the blog, Sarkar says he and UCLA Professor Bill Klug had personal differences.
The blog accuses Klug of stealing Sarkar's intellectual property and giving it to another student and says "he made me really sick."
It ends with: "Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust."
Beck said it appeared mental issues were involved and that Sarkar's dispute with Klug was tied to Sarkar thinking the professor released intellectual property that harmed Sarkar. Police asked for the public's help to find the car Sarkar drove to Los Angeles, a 2003 Nissan Sentra with the license plate 720KTW.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Sarkar had previously claimed in a blog post that Klug had stolen his code and given it to another student.
However,University sources cited by the Times called Sarkar’s allegations “completely untrue” and said Klug “bent over backward to help Sarkar finish his dissertation and graduate even though the quality of his work was not stellar”.
“Bill (Klug) was extremely generous to this student, who was a subpar student,” the Times quoted a source as saying. “He helped him out and interceded for him academically.”
Initial reports from the scene set off widespread fears of an attempted mass shooting on campus, bringing a response of hundreds of heavily armed officers. Groups of them stormed into buildings that were locked down and cleared hallways as police helicopters hovered overhead.
1) He graduated from IIT Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering in 2000.He also briefly worked as a software developer in Infosys for a year.
2) Sarkar then went to the University of Texas at Arlington in 2002 and worked as a Research Assistant there
3) He then got a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 2005.
4) Mainak then joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a Teaching Assistant for undergraduate courses in Mechanical Engineering where he met the engineering professor William Klug.