Mainak Sarkar, who fatally shot a UCLA engineering professor on Wednesday, left a small request on his suicide note: Could someone check on his cat back in his apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota?
A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman told TheWrap that Sarkar’s suicide note included his home address in Minnesota and a request to check up on his cat, which according to local station KMSP- TV goes by the name Jiffy.
Authorities found Jiffy safe and healthy in Sarkar’s apartment, but also discovered a “kill list” with the names of Prof. William Klug, who was fatally shot Wednesday, a second UCLA professor, who was not harmed, and Sarkar’s estranged wife, Ashley Hasti, who was later found dead in her apartment from a gunshot wound.
Detectives believe Sarkar killed his estranged wife after entering her home through a broken window before driving 2,000 miles to Los Angeles.
One of Sarkar’s neighbors told KMSP on Friday that he saw Sarkar eight days ago, before he embarked on his fateful cross-country trip, loading up his car with what looked like tote boxes.
That turned out to be gasoline cans that were later found in Sarkar’s abandoned car in Culver City on Friday afternoon. LAPD officers also found a handgun in the trunk of the car along with the gasoline.
Authorities told TheWrap the gasoline cans were first thought to be some sort of a bomb. But investigators now believe Sarkar had stocked up on extra gas for his drive from Minneapolis to Los Angeles so he wouldn’t have to stop to refuel.
Sarkar’s gray Nissan was parked on a residential street. Authorities believe he took a bus to the UCLA campus (they found a ticket on his body). Once at the engineering building, he shot Klug, his former doctoral dissertation adviser, before turning one of his semiautomatic guns on himself.
As for Jiffy, the cat is with St. Paul Animal Control and will at some point be available for adoption.
You can watch KMSP-TV’s full report above.