Ashley Hasti, wife of UCLA shooter, Mainak Sarkar, found dead in Minnesota
Mainak Sarkar, the gunman who opened fire in a murder-suicide at UCLA, appears to have also murdered his wife, Ashley Hasti, who was found dead on Thursday in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis.
Police who searched Sarkar’s Minnesota home found a note with an ominous title, Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters, announcing that it said: “Kill list.”
William S. Klug, the UCLA professor Sarkar killed, was on the list with his wife’s name and another professor at UCLA, who is safe and away from campus.
Mainak Sarkar
“Everybody tries to look for a reason for this. Well, first of all, there is no good reason for this,” Beck told the station. “This is a mental issue, mental derangement, but it was tied to a dispute over intellectual property.”
Regarding the motive:In a now-deleted blog post on his WordPress site LongDarkTunnelblog, Sarkar wrote about Professor Klug. On March 10, the shooter was scathing in his criticism of Klug saying:
William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy…
My name is Mainak Sarkar. I was this guy’s Ph.D student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick.
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.
Mainak Sarkar and Ashley Hasti
