What we know about Mainak Sarkar, UCLA shooter

June 3, 2016 at 6:37PM
Ashley Hasti, left, and Mainak Sarkar.
Ashley Hasti, left, and Mainak Sarkar. (Facebook/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

• Mainak Sarkar, 38, earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UCLA in 2013, but had lived in Minnesota for some time, according to LAPD police chief Charlie Beck.

• Sarkar, who police say killed UCLA professor William Klug on Wednesday, planned out the attack in advance.

• He married Ashley Hasti on June 14, 2011. About a year later, the couple separated. They lived separately since then.

• Police discovered what Sarkar titled his "kill list" at his St. Paul apartment on Agate Street, which listed the names of two targeted professors, one of whom was not on the UCLA campus at the time of the shootings. Hasti was also listed. Brooklyn Park police discovered her body in her home at 12:35 a.m. Thursday.

• Sarkar's motive for killing the professor was believed to be over the perceived intellectual property theft.

• Beck said the professors knew Sarkar had issues with them, but didn't believe he was a danger.

• On March 10, in a blog post that has since been deleted, Sarkar called Klug "a sick person" who stole his work. "I was this guy's Ph.D. student," he wrote. "We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick."

• Police say that at some point, Sarkar drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles. Police are still looking for the car, a 2003 gray Nissan Sentra with Minnesota plate 720KTW

• Sarkar earned a master's degree from Stanford University after earning an undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, according to his LinkedIn profile, which has since been deleted. While at UCLA he worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in Mechanical Engineering.

• In his 2013 dissertation, Sarkar thanks Klug, his adviser, "for all his help and support. Thank you for being my mentor."

• Beginning in 2006, Sarkar is listed as a member of the Klug Research Group in computational biomechanics at UCLA. The group studied problems "at the interface of mechanics and biology."

• After UCLA, Sarkar worked for Ohio-based rubber company Endurica LLC. He worked remotely but left the company in mid-2014 according to reports.

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