Sarkar, 38, took his own life after killing William Klug, 39, in a small office in UCLA Engineering Building 4, sources confirmed. Sarkar, a resident of Minnesota, appears also to have killed a woman in a small town in that state, officials said. The woman’s name was found on a “kill list” in Sarkar’s residence, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said. A second UCLA professor’s name was on that list as well, along with Klug’s name. “There is no good reason for this,” Beck said.
Klug was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and had been the target of Sarkar’s anger on social media for months. On March 10, Sarkar called the professor a “very sick person” who should not be trusted. “William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy,” Sarkar wrote. “He made me really sick. Your enemy is my enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust.”
Police respond to the UCLA campus after a shooting Wednesday
A source called the gunman’s accusations “absolutely untrue.” “The idea that somebody took his ideas is absolutely psychotic,” the source said. Beck said that Sarkar had written two notes, one of which had a list of names that included Klug, the dead woman and another UCLA professor. “It was a list that made the readers believe he was going to kill,” Beck said. Sarkar had driven from Minnesota to Los Angeles with two semiautomatic handguns, and investigators were still searching for the vehicle, which the chief described as a gray Nissan Sentra with Minnesota license plates 720KTW. Beck said police don’t expect the vehicle to be “any significant danger,” but officials ask anyone who sees it to call police.
Beck said the second professor named on the list has been contacted and “is fine,” but police wouldn’t reveal that person’s name. Beck said that professor also taught Sarkar when he was a student at UCLA. Klug, who was described by friends as a kind and caring man, bent over backward to help Sarkar finish his dissertation and graduate even though the quality of his work was not stellar, the source added. "Bill was extremely generous to this student, who was a subpar student,” the source said. “He helped him out and interceded for him academically." In his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2013, Sarkar expressed gratitude to Klug for his help and support.
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