Attacker in UCLA murder-suicide fatally shot woman in Minnesota: police

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former University of California, Los Angeles, graduate student shot dead a woman at her home in Minnesota before he drove almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to his old school, killed a professor then took his own life, police said on Thursday.

Mainak Sarkar, 38, had intended to kill a second professor in addition to killing engineering professor William Klug, 39, at a small office on the campus, prompting a two-hour long lockdown, police said.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told reporters on Thursday that a search of Sarkar’s St. Paul, Minnesota, home turned up a “kill list” that included the name of the woman found dead nearby, as well as the name of the other UCLA professor, who was not harmed.

“We believe that Sarkar came to the Los Angeles area very recently, within the last couple of days,” Beck told reporters at Los Angeles police headquarters. “He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to find one.”

Sarkar had been armed with two 9mm pistols and multiple ammunition clips, Beck said.

Police searched Sarkar’s Minnesota home after finding a note at the Los Angeles crime scene asking for someone to check on his cat, Beck said.

“In the search of Sarkar’s residence in Minneapolis, a list was located,” Beck said. “The list has been described as a kill list, that was the wording that was put on it.”

Sarkar, 38, shot dead Klug, then killed himself, authorities said, in an attack that prompted a two-hour lockdown of UCLA’s sprawling urban campus.

The attack appeared to be provoked by Sarkar’s belief that Klug had stolen computer code from him, according to a March blog post that appears to be written by him.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Amy Tennery in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)