“Ashley Hasti was the smartest, coolest, and funniest person I knew,” victim’s sister Alex Hasti says
The woman killed in Minnesota by UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar has been identified by her sister as Sarkar’s wife, Ashley Hasti.
“My sister, Ashley Hasti, was the smartest, coolest, and funniest person I knew,” Alex Hasti wrote on Facebook. “She could do anything she dreamed of whether it was studying abroad in four different countries, acting in school plays, trying stand up comedy and improv, and becoming a doctor. Unfortunately, she won’t get to see that last dream come true as her life was cut short much too soon by her estranged husband.”
Minnesota’s CBS station WCCO reported that Ashley Hasti was a medical student at the University of Minnesota who married Sarkar on June 14, 2011. Reports indicate that the two had been separated for some time though it was unclear if they were still married at the time of the shooting.
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It is believed that Sarkar shot and killed Ashley Hasti earlier this week before driving from Minnesota to Los Angeles to kill UCLA engineering professor William S. Klug, his former doctoral dissertation advisor, on Wednesday.
Authorities said Sarkar’s left a note at the scene of the campus shooting that asked officers to check on his cat at his apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was there that investigators found the “kill list,” which included the names of the two victims and a second UCLA professor, who wasn’t harmed.
“Professor [William] Klug’s name was on that list, as was another UCLA professor who was all right,” Los Angeles Police Department Charlie Beck said, declining to disclose the second professor’s name.
The UCLA campus was placed on lockdown on Wednesday around 10 a.m. local time after reports of an active shooter emerged.
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A blog post reportedly written by Sarkar in March — which has since been deleted — claimed that Klug had stolen computer code from him and given it to another student.
UCLA Shooting: The Scene on Campus (Photos)
Police respond to possible murder-suicide at the university that left two dead
Two people died Wednesday in a shooting at UCLA that police said may have been a murder-suicide.
