A Los Angeles-area doctor who was killed in an execution-style shooting last summer was the victim of a hit allegedly orchestrated by his ex-wife, who wept at his memorial, prosecutors claimed Monday.
Ahang Kelk, 53, has been charged with murder on suspicion of hiring a hitman to lie in wait for her ex-husband, Hamid Mirshojae, after years of ugly legal battles, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.
Mirshojae was shot and killed on August 23 while walking from his medical clinic in Woodland Hills to his car, prosecutors said. Police have arrested a suspected shooter, 41-year-old Evan Hardman, along with two suspected accomplices.
Investigators say Kelk first hired Hardman and one of the accomplices to assault her ex-husband with baseball bats—an attack that reportedly left him fearful for his life—and then hired Hardman to carry out the hit a few months later.
“The depth of the deceit and violence involved in this case is chilling, and we will not rest until justice is served,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement.
Kelk was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday. It wasn’t immediately clear who was representing her.
She and Mirshojae, 61, divorced in 2009 but had spent years fighting in court over real estate holdings and child support for their two children, according to the Los Angeles Times. At various points they had both taken out restraining orders against each other, with each saying the other person had threatened to kill them.
In 2017, investigators also accused Kelk of faking an attack at her home after a court found she had tried to swindle a different ex out of a Malibu condo they’d bought together, the Los Angeles Times reported after her arrest last week.
Their troubled history immediately made Kelk a person of interest in Mirshojae’s death, but in August she brushed off police suspicions as “all lies,” the paper reported. In early September, she organized a memorial for Mirshojae. Dressed in all black, she wept as she hugged friends and family.
“I’m speechless. It’s horrible. Words cannot explain what has happened,” she told reporters at the time.
