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Woman Killed In Minnesota Was Married To UCLA Shooter
Ashley Hasti and Mainak Sarkar (Facebook)
The Minnesota woman suspected to have been killed by UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar was married to the gunman, reports the Star Tribune.On Thursday morning authorities discovered the body of Ashley Hasti at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Police went to do a welfare check on her home after her name was found on a "kill list" at Sarkar's St. Paul apartment. Hasti was identified by her neighbors to reporters, and public records show that Hasti and Sarkar were married on June 14, 2011.
Also on the list was UCLA professor William Klug—who Sarkar shot and killed on Wednesday morning in Klug's office—and another UCLA professor who remains unharmed. Sarkar turned the gun on himself after shooting Klug.
According to LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, Sarkar left a note at the scene of the UCLA shooting, leaving the address of his St. Paul address and asking someone to "check my cat."
"Immediately, we were highly suspicious," Beck said, reports the L.A. Times. "That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota."
In the apartment they found the cat and Sarkar's supposed hit list. The third person on the list was a UCLA professor who was not on campus at the time of the shooting, but Beck believes Sarkar also intended to kill him or her, reports the Star Tribune. The third target has not yet been named by authorities.
Brooklyn Park's deputy chief of police Mark Bruley said Hasti was "deceased prior to the UCLA shooting," but said it was too early in the investigation to determine when she was killed. Investigators believe Sarkar killed Hasti before driving to Southern California and shooting Klug.
Authorities are still on the search for Sarkar's vehicle, which is described as a gray 2003 Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate 720KTW.
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Hasti was a student at the University of Minnesota Medical School when she was killed.
Sarkar earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 2013, where he had Klug as his advisor. In a now-deleted blog post from March, Sarkar accused Klug of stealing code that he wrote and giving it to another student.
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