The ex-wife of a beloved Woodland Hills doctor was charged with murder Monday, Dec. 16, with prosecutors accusing her of hiring two men to beat him with baseball bats in May and to fatally shoot him in August, authorities said.
Ahang Mirshojae, 53, did not appear in court Monday due to issues with transport, but was scheduled to appear Tuesday, where she may enter a plea to charges of special circumstances murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
One of the two men she allegedly hired, 26-year-old Sarallah Jawed of Canoga Park, appeared in court Monday, but did not enter a plea. His arraignment was postponed to Jan. 6.
Also charged in the slaying of Dr. Hamid Mirshojae is Evan Hardman, 41, of Tomball, Texas. He has yet to be extradited back to Los Angeles County after his arrest in Texas last week. Ashley Rose Sweeting, 40, of Reseda has pleaded not guilty to being an accessory after the fact and was being held on $1 million bail, prosecutors said.
All three face special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain, while Hardman faces an additional allegation of lying in wait, prosecutors said.
A fifth suspect in the case, Shawn Randolph of Valley Village, has yet to be charged in connection with the case. Whether charges were pending was not known.
Dr. Hamid Mirshojae was walking toward his SUV in the parking lot of his medical clinic in the 5900 block of Topanga Canyon Road when Hardman, wearing a mask, came from around the corner of the clinic and ambushed him from behind, shooting him once in the head from a close distance, about 5:30 p.m., Aug. 23, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said.
Hardman ran to the back of the clinic to an awaiting car, driven by Sweeting, and fled the scene. Jawed was accused of driving Hardman out of the state to Texas days later, prosecutors said.
The chief added that the motive appeared to be murder for hire and Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said money was a motivating factor, but further details were not disclosed.
Hochman announced the charges against Ahang Mirshojae Monday, but would not provide further details, instead repeatedly saying they could come out “in due course.”
But Los Angeles Police Lt. Guy Golan said all of the defendants were among a local network of friends and acquaintances of Ahang Mirshojae, without offering further specifics.
“Some of them have known each other for quite some time while other ones are acquaintances along the peripheral,” Golan said.
The murder weapon has also not yet been found, he said.
“The horror and betrayal of this crime is beyond words,” Hochman said. “The depth of the deceit and violence involved in this case is chilling.”
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Hochman declined to say what role the couple’s 2010 divorce and other court proceedings that followed played in the shooting.
Those court proceedings included multiple threats of violence and a series of filings for restraining orders, two filed by Hamid Mirshojae in 2009 and 2017 and one filed by Ahang Mirshojae in 2016. Ahang Mirshojae’s fiancé and the ex-couple’s oldest son had also filed for restraining orders in 2016 and 2017, court records show.
Hamid Mirshojae also filed a lawsuit against his ex-wife in February, accusing her of selling her ownership stake in properties in order to avoid paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars in a settlement and attorneys fees.
In Hamid Mirshojae’s 2017 filing for a restraining order, he wrote in court papers that his ex-wife continued to work at the clinic until he caught her embezzling large sums of money in October 2016. He fired her the following month, he said, but she continued going to the clinic. He claimed that on Dec. 14, 2016, she physically assaulted him, while her fiancé allegedly said he had weapons and threatened to kill him.
The district attorney declined to say what evidence investigators may have found during a raid of Ahang Mirshojae’s home in Calabasas on Thursday.