New Details Reveal UCLA Shooting Could Have Been Much Worse

It’s just been revealed that quick thinking by a UCLA professor during the shooting potentially saved more lives during the recent tragedy.

Ajit Mal is an engineering professor at UCLA. On Wednesday, he was prepping for his 10 a.m. engineering class when gunshots erupted down the hall.

Mal met his colleague, Christopher Lynch, in the hallway outside of his office.

“What was that?” Mal asked.

“That’s a gunshot,” Lynch said.

The popping noise they heard sounded like it came from a fellow professor’s room. William Klug worked right down the hall from both Mal and Lynch.

Lynch knew Klug well, and he knew that his friend would probably not be taking his own life. Lynch assumed the worst and figured that a gunman was inside terrorizing the place.

Lynch acted quickly, not knowing much about the situation. He went to Klug’s office and held the door shut while he yelled for other people to leave the building.

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

Eventually he heard a third shot and assumed that the killer had taken his own life. Soon police arrived and cleared out the remaining civilians. Lynch handed them the key to Klug’s office and left — not wanting to peek inside and see what happened.

The killer, Mainak Sarkar, was armed with two semi-automatic pistols with backup magazines. Sarkar was a formal doctoral student at UCLA.

His apparent motive for killing had to do with a computer code that he accused Klug of stealing. Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck said it definitely looked as though Sarkar was “certainly prepared to engage multiple victims.”

Mal praised Lynch’s actions. “If he (Sarkar) had come out with a loaded gun, I don’t think I’d be alive,” Mal said. “Chris Lynch’s presence of mind and quick action saved us.” (For more from the author of “New Details Reveal UCLA Shooting Could Have Been Much Worse” please click HERE)

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