BROOKLYN PARK , Minn., June 3 (UPI) — A woman found dead in Minnesota was the wife of the man who fatally shot a professor then killed himself at UCLA, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed.
Ashley Hasti, 31, was discovered in her apartment in Brooklyn Park, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, early Thursday, dead of a gunshot wound. Her name was included on a “kill list” found in the St. Paul apartment of her estranged husband, Mainak Sarkar, 38, police said.
Sarkar killed himself after fatally shooting William Klug, a UCLA professor, Wednesday. Authorities believe Sarkar drove to California from Minnesota after shooting Hasti.
“We believe she was deceased prior to the UCLA shooting,” Brooklyn Park Deputy Chief Mark Bruley said.
Hasti was a University of Minnesota medical student.
Sarkar, a former UCLA doctoral engineering student, left a blog post accusing Klug, a mechanical engineering professor, of stealing his ideas and computer code; the “kill list” targeted Hasti, Klug and another professor, who was not involved in the incident that shut down the UCLA campus Thursday.
“[Sarkar] was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims with the ordnance he had at his disposal,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said.
Sarkar had two handguns and multiple rounds of ammunition when he was found on the campus.
No motive for Hasti’s death has been determined. She and Sarkar were married in 2011 but she left him about a year later, her grandmother, Jean Johnson told the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. They did not divorce.
Beck said Sarkar left a note at the UCLA shooting scene asking that authorities check on his cat at his St. Paul apartment, where they found the list of potential victims and led them to Hasti’s body.
