Los Angeles: The gunman who shot a professor at UCLA has been identified as Mainak Sarkar, a 39-year-old Indian-American. His academic stint started off at IIT Kharagpur where he did his B-Tech in Aerospace engineering, after which he flew to Bengaluru and worked there as a software developer for a year at Infosys.
Sarkar was a diligent student and was extremely focused. “Mainak was a brilliant student. He remained busy with studies and did not talk or socialise much. As far as I remember, he was from Kolkata,” lamented an IIT professor, as quoted in a news report. According to his Linkedin profile, the scholar also worked as a research assistant in University of Texas at Arlington.
Read: UCLA murder-suicide: Mainak Sarkar's 'kill list' included wife
Sarkar immigrated to US in the year 2001 on a foreign student visa from India. Before joining UCLA, he garnered a Master’s degree from Stanford University. He joined UCLA as a research scholar and was mentored by Professor William Klug.
His hostility to Klug came to the fore when he posted a hate article on his personal blog. “He is sick, he stole my code and students should be aware of his vicious deeds,” this is how he penned down his predicament in the post.
However, in his doctoral dissertation submitted in the year 2013, he had expressed his gratitude to Klug for the help and assistance he rendered to him for his paper.
Read: UCLA murder-suicide: Gunman Mainak Sarkar had planned third killing
Before killing Klug, Sarkar killed his estranged wife in Minnesota after which he directly drove to UCLA where the shooting happened. The shooting resulted in a complete lockdown of the university and police forces rushed to the spot to bring the situation under control.
