[Last updated (6/2/2016, 9:55 p.m.) with the identification of the gunman’s estranged wife as another victim.]
The Los Angeles Police Department has identified the shooter in Wednesday’s murder-suicide at the University of California at Los Angeles as Mainak Sarkar, NBC Los Angeles and KTLA report. According to the news outlets, the police believe Mr. Sarkar, heavily armed, shot and killed William S. Klug, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, before killing himself.
The police say Mr. Sarkar, who graduated from his Ph.D. program at UCLA in 2013, had a “kill list,” and the name of another UCLA professor was on it, according to the Los Angeles Times. That professor has not been named.
A woman who was also on the list, the police say, has been found dead in Minnesota. The police named Mr. Sarkar, 38, as the suspect in that killing. Late Thursday, the Star Tribune was among news outlets that identified the woman as Ashley Hasti, who was married to Mr. Sarkar in 2011 but has lived apart from him for several years.
In a news conference on Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief, Charlie Beck, said the police believe Mr. Sarkar intended to kill both professors, but the professor who wasn’t killed was not on the campus when Mr. Sarkar arrived. The chief also said that the police have spoken to the unnamed professor, who was aware that Mr. Sarkar “had issues” with him.
A blog post supposedly written by Mr. Sarkar, which the police believe is authentic, claims that Mr. Klug stole code belonging to Mr. Sarkar. The post has been deleted.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Mr. Sarkar thanked Mr. Klug in his doctoral dissertation for his help. A page on UCLA’s website, dated 2010, suggests Mr. Sarkar was a Ph.D. student of Mr. Klug’s at one time:
A 2013-14 course catalog for the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering says Mr. Sarkar wrote a dissertation entitled “Coupled Cardiac Electrophysiology and Contraction Using Finite Element.”
The shooting put the university on lockdown as the police combed through an engineering building in search of a gunman. And news of the event quickly heightened observers’ fears that campus-carry legislation, such as the law set to take effect in Texas, will put students, staff, and faculty at risk, and create a chilling effect in the classroom.
Correction (6/2/2016, 5:30 p.m.): A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Mr. Sarkar taught a course entitled “Coupled Cardiac Electrophysiology and Contraction Using Finite Element.” That was the title of his dissertation. The post has been corrected.
