A Maplewood man was sentenced to more than two decades in prison for beating his girlfriend’s 17-month-old daughter to death last winter.

Leb Mike Meak, 36, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the February 2015 murder of Genesis Xiong, according to Dennis Gerhardstein, a spokesman for the Ramsey County attorney’s office.

Meak pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case in October.

At his plea hearing, Meak admitted he caused the injuries that led to the child’s death.

Specifically, he admitted to squeezing the toddler with both hands, causing a rib fracture; hitting her in the abdomen, causing an injury to her liver; and throwing her on the bed, which caused the child to hit her head on a wall.

The injuries occurred while the child was at Meak’s Maplewood home. At the time, Meak was dating the child’s mother, Lia Pearson, and the toddler had been staying with Meak for several weeks before her death.

Police were called to Meak’s home Feb. 12 on a report of a baby not breathing.

They found the girl covered in black and purple bruises on her stomach, chest and face.

Meak told police at the time that the girl hit her head on a space heater the night before and on some of his weights the week before.

Pearson faces charges of child endangerment and manslaughter for her role in her daughter’s death.

Her case is scheduled to go to trial July 11, Gerhardstein said.

“It’s just incredibly sad; a child lost her life,” he said.

A Coon Rapids man reported missing on Memorial Day has been found dead, according to police. Foul play is not suspected.

Thomas Ronald Crew, 58,  last was seen Sunday night. His family told Coon Rapids police he suffered from depression and was carrying a handgun. His vehicle was found Monday in Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park, but Crew and the handgun were not located.

Crew’s body was found about 11 a.m. Thursday in a heavily wooded area near the park boat launch, according to Coon Rapids police. The handgun also was located. The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Ramsey will seek to determine a cause of death.

FERGUS FALLS, Minn.  — Police in Fergus Falls say they’re investigating a homicide.

Authorities say officers responded to a call for assistance at a residence about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Officers found a person had died, most likely due to homicide. A suspect had fled the scene. Police say the suspect was found a short time later and arrested without incident.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is assisting with the investigation.

Three Somali-American friends from Minneapolis were found guilty Friday of federal charges that they tried to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, a plan that prosecutors said unfolded through propaganda videos and social media exchanges, and while they played basketball and paintball.

Carrying potential life sentences, the verdicts against the three men — Guled Ali Omar, 21; Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22; and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22 — came after an emotional 17-day trial in which onetime friends from the Twin Cities’ large Somali community testified against one another, family members squabbled in the hallways and spectators were occasionally ejected from the courtroom.

On Friday, the three defendants — who had all pleaded not guilty — sat impassively in dark suits as a court clerk began to read a litany of “guilty” verdicts, the most serious being conspiracy to commit murder overseas. They were also convicted of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

The sobs of family members broke the silence. One woman, weeping, rushed from the courtroom, and others used their colorful headscarves to wipe their eyes and cover their faces. As the three men were led from the courtroom, Farah waved to the relatives and supporters in the gallery.

The convictions capped an investigation that began in 2014 and has led to six other young men pleading guilty to terrorism charges, and once again shined a harsh light on radicalization among young men in the country’s largest Somali community. Law enforcement authorities have said that more than 20 young men from Minnesota have left to join the Shabab militant group in Somalia and that more than 15 have tried or succeeded in leaving to join the Islamic State.

At a news conference, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger called the case “one of the most important” in Minnesota in recent years, illuminating the problem of terrorism recruiting “in our own backyard.”

“They were not misled by a friend or tricked into becoming terrorists,” Luger said. “Rather, they made a deeply personal decision. They wanted to fight for a brutal terrorist organization, kill innocent people and destroy their families in the process.”

Federal officials also rejected criticisms of one of their witnesses, a friend of the men named Abdirahman Bashir, who worked as a paid informant for federal investigators and provided hours of audio recordings of the defendants.

Some Somali community members and relatives of the defendants have criticized Bashir’s role, suggesting the defendants were entrapped. Prosecutors rejected that claim.

“This conspiracy began back in 2014,” Luger said. “The informant Bashir did not work with the government until early 2015. These people have been long involved with this conspiracy.”

Prosecutors accused the men of being part of a larger group who met to plot ways to get to Syria. In his closing arguments, an assistant U.S. attorney, John Docherty, said the three were “exceptionally persistent” and “exceptionally violent.”

A lawyer for Daud, Bruce Nestor, suggested that an appeal could be filed.

The verdict was not much of a surprise to Burhan Mohumed, 26, a friend of the defendants who had been banned from the courthouse by the judge. He called the process “purely political.”

“I left a little hope that they wouldn’t be convicted on a conspiracy to murder charge,” he said. “I didn’t think they had enough evidence to convict them on that. I think that was an overreach.”

During the trial, the defense argued that the three young men had been manipulated by the FBI’s informant, and attacked the credibility of the members of the group who earlier pleaded guilty and testified for the government. In addition to the six who have pleaded guilty to various charges, a seventh man charged is believed to be in Syria.

Outside the courtroom, Omar Jamal, a Somali community activist, worried that the Somali community would find little solace or justice in guilty verdicts handed down by an all-white jury that was shown violent Islamic State propaganda videos.

“This decision will reinforce the perception in the community that the system is rigged,” Jamal said.

But after the verdicts were read, Judge Michael Davis thanked the jury, saying, “You have come back with a fair and just verdict.”

As the jurors left the courtroom, the three young men looked toward the gallery at a row of female relatives.

Davis laid out the details for sentencing, engaging in a brief colloquy with each defendant. They would be able to read presentencing reports, he said, before being sentenced.

“Do you understand what the verdicts were?” Davis asked Farah.

“Yes, sir,” Farah responded quietly.

“Do you have any questions of me?” “Not at this time, sir.”

An off-duty Minnesota state trooper took out several road signs and got his pickup truck stuck in a median before he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving early Thursday in Fridley, according to court documents.

The trooper, Sgt. Chris Daas, was arrested by Fridley police at 3 a.m. Thursday. He was charged Friday afternoon in Anoka County District Court with refusal to submit to a chemical test and fourth-degree driving while impaired.

According to the criminal complaint, a 911 caller reported seeing a vehicle hit multiple road signs as it traveled west on Osborne Road in Fridley. The vehicle then turned south onto University Avenue, veered into the median and got stuck.

Fridley police officers arrived and found a pickup’s step plate in the median on Osborne and the damaged pickup itself stuck in the median on University. The citizen caller told police the pickup had been heading west in the eastbound lanes of Osborne before jumping the curb and hitting the street signs.

Officers talked to Daas and noted that he smelled like alcohol, had bloodshot eyes and dropped his driver’s license on the ground. Asked how much he had to drink, Daas said “too much,” an investigator wrote in the criminal complaint. He was taken into custody.

Daas, who serves out of the State Patrol’s Golden Valley office, has been a trooper since 2004. His record includes a lifesaving award, a meritorious service award and a letter of commendation. He was honored last year for pulling a woman from a burning car in Brooklyn Center.

He was also suspended for five days in 2011 following a conduct complaint. In 2008, he was named one of the patrol’s “DWI Enforcer All-Stars” for making 123 drunken driving arrests.

Col. Matt Langer, chief of the Minnesota State Patrol, called the incident “disturbing” in a statement Friday.

“Chris Daas’ alleged behavior does not reflect our core values as an organization, nor does it demonstrate our expectations for troopers, whether on- or off-duty,” Langer said.

• California law enforcement officials believe Sarkar bought his guns legally in Minnesota; shot his estranged wife, Ashley Hasti, 31, in her Brooklyn Park home, then drove to California to shoot Klug, according to the Los Angeles Times. They have yet to find his car, a 2003 Grey Nissan Sentra.
• Klug, 39, was Sarkar’s former adviser, according to a 2014 doctoral commencement booklet obtained by the Los Angeles Times. In his dissertation, the Times noted, Sarkar thanked Klug for being his “mentor.” Sarkar is still listed as a current member the university’s Klug Research Group in computational biomechanics, which Klug headed.
• But earlier this year, Sarkar disparaged Klug in online postings, saying Klug was “really sick,” stole computer code from him and gave it to another student.
• A source familiar with Sarkar’s relationship with Klug told the Los Angeles Times that Sarkar’s accusation was “absolutely psychotic,” and added that Sarkar had “severe mental problems, including depression and an inability to study, which compromised his work at UCLA.”
• Sarkar settled in Minnesota after graduating from UCLA with a doctorate in solid mechanics in 2013, and worked remotely as an engineering analyst for Endurica LLC, an Ohio-based rubber company, according to his LinkedIn page, which has since been taken down.
• Sarkar had an apartment in St. Paul’s North End at 1052 Agate Street. Neighbors there didn’t seem to know him well. He became a permanent resident in 2014, and didn’t have a criminal history.
• A legal representative for Endurica, at the Findley-based Schuck Law Office, told the Pioneer Press Sarkar left that job in August 2014, and the company had had no contact with him since. The representative said they had no information on whether Sarkar was fired or left on his own, though a positive recommendation by Endurica’s president, William Mars, also appeared on Sarkar’s now-defunct LinkedIn profile.
• When police searched the apartment Thursday, they found ammunition for one of the guns and a “kill list” with the names of Klug, another UCLA professor, and Hasti, whom Sarkar had married in 2011. Hasti, a University of Minnesota medical student, was found dead of a gunshot wound in her Brooklyn Park home Thursday. It remained unclear if they were still married, and law enforcement officials and family members told multiple media outlets that the couple had split years ago.
• Prior to his time at UCLA, Sarkar graduated from Stanford University in 2005 with a Master’s of Science in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. He was also a 2000 graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering, according to the Hindustan Times.

After killing college professor William Klug, gunman Mainak Sarkar left a suspicious note at the scene of the murder-suicide he orchestrated on the UCLA campus.

In it, he asked authorities to “check on my cat” back in Minnesota.

On Wednesday night, that’s exactly what St. Paul police did.

Robert Humphrey, a spokesman with St. Paul’s Department of Safety and Inspections, said the adult domestic tabby is alive and well at the city’s animal-control shelter on Jessamine Avenue West, near Como Park. 

A microchip determined the cat’s official name to be Jiffy. He’d been adopted from a humane society by Sarkar and his estranged wife, Ashley Hasti, Humphrey said. Hasti was found shot dead in her Brooklyn Park home early Thursday after authorities found her name on a “kill list” at Sarkar’s apartment in the North End neighborhood.

Hasti has relatives in the Twin Cities.

“If someone from the family claims it, and they certainly could, we would give them the cat,” Humphrey said. Otherwise, “it was adopted from one of our partners in the rescue community, and it would likely go back to them.”

Inquiries about the cat have come from as far away as news stations in Los Angeles, Humphrey said. He noted that St. Paul Animal Control handles hundreds of cats and dogs every year, including some taken from homes where a suicide or violent crime unfolded. Animal Control has been asked to assist St. Paul police 13 times this year.

While the city shelter is not strictly a “no-kill” facility, he said Animal Control takes pains to match every animal it can with a humane society or another rescue partner, who then coordinate adoptions in the community.

Over and over again, people have been calling St. Paul police about a 55-year-old woman.

One family, who didn’t know the woman, reported she came to their home repeatedly and accused them of kidnapping and raping people inside, according to a March police report. In September, another person told police the woman left nine minutes of irrational voicemail messages after his business fixed her vehicle. Some reports recount the woman yelling racial slurs at people.

In a meeting last week, two St. Paul police officers told the supervisor of the Ramsey County crisis team about the various reports on this woman, whom they believe lives in her vehicle.

What could they do next time the police received a complaint about her? Could Ramsey County mental health professionals join officers to see about getting her help?

As St. Paul police look for better ways to handle the mentally ill, they rely more and more on Ramsey County mental health professionals. City police recently applied for a $250,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant to create a Mental Health Response Team pairing officers with crisis workers.

“When people aren’t sure what to do, who do they call? They call the police,” said St. Paul police officer Jamie Sipes, who is also a crisis negotiator. “With people who have mental health issues, sometimes the police aren’t the right answer, but that’s who responds.”

Collaborating with mental health professionals can get people the resources and help they need, he said.

The effort comes as police locally and around the country examine training and policies about use-of-force, particularly against those suffering from mental illness.

THREE OUT OF 10 DEATHS

About 30 percent of the people fatally shot by police in Minnesota in the past decade have been diagnosed as having a mental illness or having exhibited signs of mental illness, according to a Pioneer Press analysis.

For Kathy Czech, a retired nurse who lives in Minneapolis, it was the constant news reports from around the country that spurred her to action.

“I kept thinking, ‘This shouldn’t be happening like this,’ ” Czech said. “It was people committing suicide by cop and people with depression or schizophrenia, who are particularly vulnerable because of communication issues, that would do something that appeared threatening to the officers and then they would get shot. At first, I went into it thinking, ‘The cops are horrible,’ and then I realized that these policemen are not trained social workers and they want to go at home at the end of the day, too.”

Czech and her brother, William Czech, began researching what police departments were doing around the country and found out about the co-responder model. The two started a group, Safety Triage and Mental Health Providers, or STAMP, and are urging police departments around Minnesota to consider pairing officers with mental health professionals.

INCREASE IN POLICE CALLS, TRAINING

St. Paul police responded to nearly 6,000 calls in the last two years involving emotionally disturbed individuals or vulnerable adults.

Those numbers don’t capture all such cases and occurrences have been on the rise, said Mary Nash, an acting senior commander who spent 20 years as a crisis negotiator. She is leading the department’s work with Ramsey County mental health workers.

Across Minnesota, 94 of 101 police departments surveyed about a year and a half ago by the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association reported an increase in mental-health related calls over five years. For about 20 of the agencies, the calls increased more than 50 percent, said Andy Skoogman, the association’s executive director.

As a result, police departments have been seeking to train their officers in crisis intervention. About 70 of 100 Minnesota police chiefs said their departments are providing the training in some form, according to a survey currently underway, Skoogman said.

In St. Paul, about one-third of front-line patrol officers have been certified in crisis intervention. The goal is to train all patrol officers, the department has said.

If St. Paul received the Justice Department grant, some of the money would go toward crisis intervention training. There would be additional, intensive training for a smaller number of police officers who want to become the department’s mental health officers.

Overall, the grant would fund planning and implementation of a Mental Health Response Team.

The aim is for specially-trained St. Paul officers and Ramsey County crisis team members to respond together to 1,000 dispatch calls involving people with mental health concerns each year. The team also would plan home visits for 60 people whom police are called about most often, with the intent of offering referrals for services and building rapport.

“Right now, police mostly end up getting involved when people are in deep crisis and then sometimes we’re taking them, maybe forcibly if they will not go, to get help because that’s what the situation evolves to. … If we can meet somebody before the crisis, we can maybe reduce the amount of times that we have a negative encounter,” Nash said.

The grants to start a Mental Health Response Team are competitive — DOJ typically receives 150-170 applications and provides funding to 35-39, according to the agency. A decision about grant recipients is expected in August.

EFFORTS MOVE FORWARD

St. Paul police are “not sitting back and waiting” for the grant, Nash said.

“People are popping up on our radar and officers are saying, ‘How can we have a better response for this person?’ and we’re doing the best we can to come up with a plan to follow up,” she said.

That was why two officers, Sgt. Mary Brodt and Officer Marshall Titus, met last week with Brian Theine, Ramsey County crisis team supervisor.

They are among a group of officers who have volunteered to “dig a little bit deeper in mental health calls,” Nash said.

Brodt and Titus took police reports to the meeting with Theine and told him about a handful of people whom officers have been called about, often repeatedly.

The officers didn’t know if the people in the reports had a diagnosed psychiatric condition, but were aware they had made delusional statements and sometimes frightened others with threatening or erratic behavior.

In some of the cases, the officers and Theine discussed making advance arrangements for officers and crisis workers to head out together and talk to the individuals or their families about mental health services.

For the 55-year-old woman who police have repeatedly been called about, they knew finding her would be more difficult because she is apparently homeless. If they get another call about her, they are aiming to have officers call for a crisis worker to respond with them, Brodt said.

DULUTH’S ‘EMBEDDED SOCIAL WORKER’

One police department in Minnesota has been taking a different approach to mental health calls for the past year.

As far as Duluth police officials know, they are the first in Minnesota to have what they refer to as an embedded social worker in the department.

Ona Filipovich, a St. Louis County worker, has been following up with people from Duluth police calls officers feel may need social services.

“One of the things she does the best is connecting with people,” said Lt. Chad Nagorski, the police coordinator of the program.

Last summer, someone called 911 about a man wandering around Duluth’s Canal Park and expressed concern that the man was lost. Officers tried to talk to him.

He wouldn’t give officers his name and was not coherent. Police thought he needed help, but were concerned that trying to get him to go with officers would turn into a struggle, Nagorski said.

Enter Filipovich. She went to the park and the man’s mood changed when he saw someone not in uniform.

Filipovich sat and talked to the man. He told her his name, and she contacted his family. Filipovich found out he had dementia and mental health issues related to it, Nagorski said. The man’s relatives came to get him.

Duluth police believe the program is successful, though it’s difficult to show statistically, Nagorski said. “How do you quantify that, if she had not intervened and helped a person, that means we don’t get five more police calls?”

SLOWING THINGS DOWN

In May 2015, then-St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith attended a Police Executive Research Forum conference with other law enforcement leaders around the country about “re-engineering use of force.”

PERF’s recent research and recommendations have focused on officers responding to individuals with mental illnesses, addicted to drugs or who have a condition that can cause them to behave erratically or threatening. It’s for situations that do not involve someone armed with a gun.

Smith, who retired last month, wrote in a March report that he returned to St. Paul and began “immediately to focus on providing more training for our officers — on slowing things down, taking tactical cover, and understanding that ‘distance plus cover equals time and safety.’ We formulated a training curriculum and trained our entire department on this.”

A recent case, involving a man who was on drugs and who had a mental illness, illustrated what Smith was describing, police said.

Supervisors showed the squad video to St. Paul officers at roll calls and talked about what the officers did well.

It was a Saturday in March, at about 10:30 a.m., when officers were called to Maryland Avenue and Clarence Street. A man in his 30s was naked and walking in the middle of the street.

“Shoot me, shoot me, (expletive)!” and “Blow my brains out!” the man repeatedly shouted. Police said the officers kept their distance, initially staying in the squad car. Officers asked the man to get onto the sidewalk, with one telling him, “Sir, nobody wants to hurt you … We’re going to get you some help.”

The man responded, “(Expletive) you!” and pounded on the hood of the squad car with both fists several times.

When more officers arrived to help and the man still would not get out of the road, one officer tried to use a Taser on him, but it didn’t work. But the man soon responded to officers’ commands to lie on the ground, and paramedics evaluated him and took him to the hospital.

PHILIP QUINN CASE

One St. Paul resident, Darleen Tareeq, sees the various efforts as progress, though she questions why officers in a metropolitan area like St. Paul were not already better equipped to help people who are mentally ill.

Tareeq’s fiancée, Philip Quinn, was in the midst of a psychiatric emergency when he rushed with a screwdriver at a St. Paul police officer and his mother in September of 2015. The officer fatally shot the 30-year-old Quinn and a grand jury determined the officer’s actions were justified.

When Tareeq initially called the non-emergency phone number for St. Paul police last year, she said she was not looking for a law enforcement response. Instead, she wanted help from paramedics to get Quinn from her West Seventh-area home to the hospital. Quinn, a schizophrenic, had been cutting himself and was delusional, Tareeq said. An autopsy also showed Quinn had methamphetamine in his system.

Quinn ran from the first officers who approached and apparently tried to force his way into strangers’ apartments, according to witness statements. Later, Quinn’s mother called for help from police to get her son so he could be committed. She reported Quinn had threatened to stab Tareeq, though Tareeq says that never happened and that she told officers as much.

“People have a crisis sometimes and they’re dying at the hands of law enforcement because they’re not taking their hands out of their pocket quick enough or some cop’s afraid of a screwdriver,” Tareeq said.

Tareeq said she’s grieving Quinn’s death and remains cynical about the police. Nevertheless, she sees the move toward officers working more with crisis workers as “a step in the right direction.”

A Minnesota man serving life in prison without parole for a 26-year-old drug conviction was one of several dozen whose sentences were reduced by a executive order Friday.

President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Sherman Ray Meirovitz of Minneapolis, who in 1990 at the age of 46, was given a life sentence without parole under federal “career offender” guidelines. He was convicted of multiple drug offenses, including trying to buy nearly five pounds of cocaine.

Meirovitz, now 73, was the first in the state to be convicted under a strict revamp of federal sentencing guidelines, which allowed for life without parole if the defendant had two previous felony convictions for certain drug offenses or crimes of violence. Meirovitz had a 1983 manslaughter conviction already on his record for the shooting death of his mother-in-law, as well as an earlier conviction for distributing drugs.

Meirovitz appealed his conviction, saying his drug crimes weren’t serious enough to warrant a life sentence. But the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his argument stating, “Given that drug dealers themselves sentence many individuals to a lifetime of addiction and dependency, a life sentence for repeatedly dealing drugs cannot be considered disproportionately cruel and unusual.”

Meirovitz is currently housed in a medium-security federal prison in Forrest City, Ariz. The order will allow Meirovitz’s sentence to expire on June 3, 2017.

LOS ANGELES — With a wall’s worth of academic degrees from top universities and a new wife in his chosen country, Mainak Sarkar entered midlife with a foundation of success. Then the St. Paul man’s life began to unravel.

This week he snapped, and for reasons that investigators are still trying to understand gunned down those he once held close.

Authorities say Sarkar, 38, killed his estranged wife with repeated gunshots in Brooklyn Park, then drove across half the country to Los Angeles and shot dead the UCLA professor who had helped him earn an engineering Ph.D.

As panic began to spread on the bustling UCLA campus, he turned the gun on himself.

He left behind devastated families and a shaken university community, a “kill list” found in his St. Paul apartment that included the name of a second UCLA professor he felt had wronged him — and many unanswered questions.

Chief among them is what led him to violence. Police also have not detailed when they believe Sarkar shot Ashley Hasti, 31, after apparently breaking into the Brooklyn Park home she shared with her father; whether he committed other crimes en route to California; or why he felt wronged by another professor on the “kill list” who was not on campus when Sarkar arrived with two semiautomatic pistols.

What soon became clear was that Sarkar believed the professor he killed, William Klug, had stolen code from him. In March, Sarkar posted online that Klug — the man he had praised in his 2013 dissertation as a mentor — had “made me really sick.”

Colleagues said only a deranged person could conclude someone of Klug’s character would defraud a student.

“Apparently he’s harbored those feelings over the past three years since his graduation” but investigators hadn’t found any “trigger event” that would explain why he decided to kill now, Los Angeles police Capt. William Hayes said Friday.

He did say prescription medication, possibly Valium or a similar sedative, was found in Sarkar’s North End apartment.

Even before his death, the 39-year-old Klug had been hailed as a caring father and gifted educator who inspired his students. Hundreds gathered to honor him at on-campus vigils.

Klug’s outgoing personality contrasted with Sarkar’s introversion.

Where Klug smiles in pictures, Sarkar rarely does.

“He was a little bit of a loner,” said Ajit Mal, an engineering professor who taught Sarkar in one of his earliest classes at UCLA, where he enrolled in 2006.

As Klug’s career and family blossomed in his native Southern California, Sarkar struggled to finish his studies.

While at UCLA, Sarkar was “a nice guy going through the same anxieties and struggles as anyone else,” recalled Jeff Eldredge, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor who was a close friend of Klug’s and helped review and later approved Sarkar’s dissertation.

Eldredge called Klug an exceptional person and teacher who had a gentle way giving feedback to students. Even so, Sarkar “didn’t take criticism well” when he submitted a dissertation that advisers returned, requesting significant revisions.

“He was rather combative in his responses,” Eldredge said. “He’d say, ‘I don’t know how to answer that’ or ‘I don’t know what that means.’ He was just very stubborn.”

Sarkar submitted a new document that was barely sufficient for Klug to urge colleagues to grant him a Ph.D. in 2013.

By then, Sarkar and Hasti had been married two years.

Hasti’s grandmother, Jean Johnson, said Sarkar was reserved and polite but couldn’t handle Hasti teasing him. Once, Johnson said, Sarkar called her and asked how he should respond to remarks Hasti made that bothered him. Johnson described Sarkar as acting like a 2-year-old; Hasti got on the phone and said she had just been joking.

“It was really hard to say ‘whoopee,’ ” Johnson recalled of the moment her beloved granddaughter shared that she would marry Sarkar. “I was dumbfounded. I said, You’ve got to be kidding.”

Sarkar is not featured much in Hasti’s Facebook pictures. When he is, he’s not smiling, even when she is, her hand on his shoulder. In his own sparse Facebook account, Sarkar posted just a few photos of his wife, who was a University of Minnesota medical student. In some of those, he does smile.

Sarkar came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2001 after earning a degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur.

In India, former classmates and teachers described a solid student who gave no indication of aggression.

He attended Stanford University from fall 2003 until spring 2005, when he received a master’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, according to the university.

By 2006, he had moved south to UCLA.

Johnson said Hasti met Sarkar while she was studying in a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., in 2009 and 2010, when he was a student at UCLA. They married in Hennepin County on June 14, 2011.

Hasti, who had a 2008 undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in Asian languages and literature, spoke fluent Chinese and knew French. She also dabbled in stand-up comedy.

Johnson said Hasti was a year away from finishing medical school at the U and hoped to work with children.

It appears that 2014 was pivotal for Sarkar — a fulcrum year when his life tipped toward failure, despite being granted a green card to stay in the U.S.

Johnson said 2014 was when the couple split, though they did not divorce. It also was the year that Sarkar left his last known job, where he apparently worked remotely as an engineering analyst for an Ohio-based rubber company called Endurica.

Company President Will Mars said Sarkar left the position that August, but declined to elaborate.

On Friday, a bicyclist found a 2003 Nissan Sentra that police believe Sarkar used to drive from St. Paul to Los Angeles.

Police searched it for bombs and found no explosives, but a handgun and cans of gasoline were in the trunk. The gas apparently was used to avoid using credit cards and making fuel stops as Sarkar drove cross-country, and his car was spotted in Denver the day before the UCLA killing, Hayes said.

Sarkar parked in a neighborhood where he once lived and took a bus to campus on a route he would have used while attending UCLA, Hayes said.

Investigators planned to examine the bus surveillance video.

The cat Sarkar left in his St. Paul apartment is being cared for at the city animal shelter.

The Hennepin County medical examiner said Hasti died of multiple gunshot wounds. Officers found a broken window where they believe Sarkar entered Hasti’s home to commit the crime. Brooklyn Park police said they had no previous calls concerning Hasti or Sarkar.

Earlier Friday, UCLA’s engineering faculty met to discuss the shooting. No one could recall a sign that Sarkar would become violent.

“He went through something — all I can think is personal struggles the last few days, weeks or years that we weren’t privy to,” professor Eldredge said. “We assume, frankly, that he went through a psychological break that was pretty profound.”

The suspect in a Wednesday night homicide has been identified by the Fergus Falls, Minn., Police Department.

Dustin Defiel, 28, is charged with second-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of his father, Ricardo Defiel, a city employee in the northwestern Minnesota town.

The Fergus Falls Police Department reported that officers were dispatched to the home for a shooting at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday after Dustin Defiel’s mother, Tamara, called authorities.

Officers arrived and used a SWAT peacekeeper vehicle as they approached the home. Dustin Defiel had left the scene by then.

Police found a body in the upstairs bedroom that was later identified as Ricardo Defiel with massive head trauma consistent with a gunshot wound. A single rifle round was found on the floor. Officers reported seeing blood and scattered remains throughout the bedroom.

Officials found the mother in the bathroom screaming, “He’s going to kill me.”

The suspect was later found inside his car near Battle Lake. A firearm was found in the passenger seat, in plain view, after a traffic stop. Officials also found a magazine near the driver’s-side door and a fillet knife. All of the items were placed into evidence and the vehicle was brought to the Fergus Falls Police Department,

Upon arrest, Dustin Defiel was observed with dried blood on his hands, face and clothing, police said. Blood was also found on the exterior of the car.

BELLEVUE, Wis. — Brown County authorities are asking for the public’s help as they investigate the killing of a 31-year-old woman.

The sheriff’s office wants anyone who may have had contact with victim Nicole VanderHeyden or suspect Douglass Detrie on the night of May 20 or morning of May 21 to contact investigators.

Press-Gazette Media reports Capt. David Poteat says investigators want to see if there is any evidence they may be missing.

Detrie has been arrested but not formally charged in the death of VanderHeyden, his live-in girlfriend. The body of the mother of three was found May 21 in a Bellevue field, about three miles from the couple’s home.

Prosecutors say VanderHeyden had been strangled and beaten. Detrie is being held on a $1 million bond.

LOS ANGELES — UCLA professor Ajit Mal was in his office Wednesday getting ready to teach his 10 a.m. engineering class when he heard two pops.

He came out of his fourth-floor office in the Engineering 4 building as did his colleague Christopher Lynch. They looked at each other.

“What was that?” Mal said.

“That’s gunshot,” Lynch replied.

Down the hall in his westward-facing office, their colleague, William Klug, had been shot dead by Mainak Sarkar, a former doctoral student who had accused the professor of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else.

But neither Mal nor Lynch, both professors of mechanical and aerospace engineering, knew that at the time.

Lynch did know that Klug, an engineering professor described by colleagues as both brilliant and kind, would never take his own life. He figured a shooter was inside.

And he knew that more than a dozen faculty and staff members were on the floor at the time.

So he went to Klug’s office and held the door shut.

“If he had stepped out, we’d all be in trouble,” Lynch said of the shooter.

After that, Lynch heard a third shot inside. Then silence. Lynch assumed the shooter had killed himself.

Within minutes, the professors said, police converged and cleared out the floor. Lynch gave the door key to police without looking inside and left. He said he did not feel Sarkar try to open the door after the shooting but was sure the gunman had heard the yells from the hallway to clear out and that police had been called.

Mal credits Lynch with saving his life. Besides holding the door shut, Mal said, Lynch also shouted at him and other colleagues to return to their offices and close their doors.

Sarkar had been armed with two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines, and was “certainly prepared to engage multiple victims,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said.

“If he had come out with a loaded gun, I don’t think I’d be alive,” Mal said of Sarkar. “Chris Lynch’s presence of mind and quick action saved us.”

“Not a single person panicked,” Lynch said. “Everyone acted professionally.”

– Teresa Watanabe

A North St. Paul man was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for the fatal March shooting of a St. Paul teen on University Avenue.

The gang-related killing was St. Paul’s first homicide of 2016. Rayshon Tyresemalik Brooks, 20, said he was in an SUV near the Days Inn hotel on University Avenue about 11 p.m. March 5 when he saw two teens walking by. Brooks said one of the teenagers displayed a gun, and when he got out of the SUV to approach them, they ran and shot at him.

He told investigators he ran the other way and shot back, firing four times with a .45 caliber pistol. One bullet hit John Marshall Broyles, 17, in the chest and he bled to death on the sidewalk. A handgun was found under his body, according to a criminal complaint.

Broyles was a senior at Como Park Senior High School and had been accused in 2015 of a gang-related assault.

Brooks said he is with the HAM Crazy gang and the teenagers were with the rival Gutter Block gang.

Brooks pleaded guilty in April to a charge of second-degree murder committed for the benefit of a gang. He was sentenced Friday in Ramsey County District Court to 162 months in prison.

GLYNDON, Minn. — A man is in custody following a chase that topped 130 mph in rural Clay County as he fled law enforcement officers with a toddler in the back seat of his car.

Dustin Bruce Martin, 34, was arrested at his home in rural Hawley after the chase, which began in Glyndon on Saturday evening when a police officer saw Martin speeding and crossing the centerline of U.S. 10 several times, said Glyndon Police Chief Mike Cline.

The officer stopped Martin on U.S. 10 east of Glyndon. As the officer approached Martin’s vehicle, he sped off. The officer and others who later gave chase didn’t know the 2-year-old child was in the back seat of Martin’s car until they took him into custody near Hawley, Cline said.

Martin drove east on U.S. 10, then south on Minnesota 9, reaching speeds in excess of 130 mph, Cline said. Then Martin turned on a gravel road, driving at speeds about 80 mph.

Officers deployed “stop sticks” to try to stop Martin, but they had no effect. Martin was finally taken into custody when he drove to his residence, Cline said.

The child is with the mother.

Martin is in the Clay County Jail on charges of felony fleeing, second-degree driving while intoxicated, second-degree test refusal, child endangerment, reckless driving, speeding and open container, Cline said.

A reward is being offered to find the gunman whose bullet entered a North Minneapolis house last month and struck a 10-year-old girl in the foot.

CrimeStoppers is offering an unspecified reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the incident in which shots were fired in the alley of the 1600 block of Plymouth Avenue North on May 5 at about 10:20 p.m.

Stray bullets struck homes along the block, and one of the bullets flew into the girl’s bedroom while she was in bed.

The bullet went through the girl’s foot.

There were numerous people outside when the shooting happened, according to a news release from Minneapolis police.

“We know people know what happened,” said John Elder, a spokesman for Minneapolis police. “We want them to come forward, and CrimeStoppers is willing to pay them to do that.”

A 46-year-old Blaine man was killed Sunday afternoon when he lost control of his motorcycle and struck a guardrail on Wisconsin 35 near Prescott, Wis.

The Wisconsin State Patrol said the driver of a 2016 Harley Davidson motorcycle crashed near 480th Avenue in Pierce County around 1 p.m. Sunday.

The motorcyclist was wearing a helmet. His identity was not released Sunday night.

Police say a fight erupted in gunfire, leaving four people shot in north Minneapolis.

Authorities say those that suffered gunshot wounds are expected to recover. They were treated at area hospitals.

Police spokesman John Elder says officers were called about 9:30 p.m. Sunday and found a woman with a gunshot wound. Investigators later learned three additional people that were hit by gunshots were taken by others to hospitals.

A southeastern Minnesota man is accused of driving a riding lawn mower while intoxicated and kicking a sheriff’s deputy.

Olmsted County sheriff’s officials say the 26-year-old man was arrested about 9:15 p.m. Saturday in Eyota after law enforcement got a call about someone on a lawnmower who seemed to be impaired.

Sheriff’s Capt. Scott Behrns says a sobriety test showed the man was well over the limit to drive, KTTC-TV reported.

The man is also accused of kicking a sheriff’s deputy in the arm and stealing lumber from Dollar General.

Eyota is located about 14 miles east of Rochester, Minn.

Police are investigating a 20-year-old woman’s report that a stranger followed her as she crossed St. Paul’s Wabasha Street bridge early Saturday, threatened her and sexually assaulted her nearby.

The woman took a light-rail train from Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul and was walking across the bridge to her boyfriend’s home on the city’s West Side about 3:15 a.m. when she noticed a man trailing her, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman.

She was nervous, “but made conversation with him as a way to gauge his intentions” and was trying to head to safety at the Holiday gas station at Wabasha Street and Plato Boulevard, Ernster said.

Outside a warehouse in the 100 block of South Wabasha Street, the man demanded oral sex. She complied because “she was really afraid and thought he’d kill her,” Ernster said.

The man left, and the woman went to the Holiday station nearby. Police searched the area but didn’t find the suspect.

Police are looking for surveillance video or witnesses to help identify the suspect, Ernster said. He is described as 30 to 35 years old, black, 5 feet 6 inches to 5 feet 9 inches tall, with a medium build and a goatee; he was wearing a black T-shirt and gray pants or jeans.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 651-266-5685.