Murdered Minnesota woman was estranged wife of Mainak Sarkar

WASHINGTON: A Minnesota woman named in University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), gunman Mainak Sarkar’s “kill list” and found dead with gunshot wounds has been

WASHINGTON: A Minnesota woman named in University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), gunman Mainak Sarkar’s “kill list” and found dead with gunshot wounds has been identified as his estranged wife Ashley Hasti.

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Sarkar, a former UCLA doctoral student from India, met and married 31-year-old Hasti in California, NBC News quoted one of her relatives as saying. They separated several years ago.

Sarkar killed himself after fatally shooting UCLA professor William Klug on Wednesday.

His “kill list” named Klug, Hasti and another professor, who is safe.

Police said Sarkar accused Klug, who had helped him with his dissertation and whom he had once called a mentor, of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else.

He came to Los Angeles armed with two semi-automatic pistols and multiple rounds of ammunition and magazines. Police have said he was “prepared to engage multiple victims”.

Sarkar lived in Minnesota and worked as an analyst with an engineering firm. Police found his address in a note he left behind, asking the finder to check on his cat.

“He was a nice quiet young man,” Fitzgibbons said. “I don’t know what happened to make him do this. I am just as shocked as everyone else.”

Sarkar graduated from IITKharagpur in aerospace engineering and worked briefly at Infosys. In the US, he went to the University of Texas and Stanford before UCLA.