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Mainak Sarkar, the man who shot and killed UCLA professor William Klug before turning the gun on himself on Wednesday, is now linked to the death of a woman in another state.
On Thursday morning, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told KTLA that the investigation into Wednesday's shooting on the UCLA campus led to the discovery of a woman who was shot and killed at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Investigators found a hit list at Sarkar's home in Minnesota that included Klug, the woman found dead, and another UCLA professor.
While Beck did not name the other UCLA professor, he did say that he or she was "all right." He added, "I'm not going to comment on exactly what was in it, other than the three names that I mentioned."
At a press conference on Thursday morning, Brooklyn Park's deputy chief of police Mark Bruley said the woman found killed was "deceased prior to the UCLA shooting." According Beck, Sarkar drove from Minneapolis to Los Angeles with two guns. Police are now searching for the car that Sarkar drove.
Update [11:20]: A neighbor of the woman found slain identified has identified her as Ashley Hasti, according to the Star Tribune. Hasti was a student at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Sarkar was a former graduate student at UCLA, and had Klug as his advisor. In a blog post that Sarkar wrote in March, he accused Klug of stealing code that he had written and giving it to another student, calling Klug a "sick guy." UCLA denies this claim.
Beck described Sarkar's car as a grey 2003 Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate 720KTW and asked for the public's help in finding it.
"We don't expect there to be any danger associated with that vehicle, but we do want the evidence contained," he told the KTLA broadcast.
