REDMOND, WASHINGTON (AP) – A longhaul truck driver from Texas who became obsessed with a software engineer in Washington state in the United States after meeting her through a social media chatroom app killed her, her husband and himself after stalking them for months, police said.
Zohreh Sadeghi, 33, and her husband, Mohammad Milad Naseri, 35, were shot to death in their suburban Seattle home by Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, 38, according to Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe. He said officers spent a week trying to serve a protection order on Khodakaramrezaei but had not been able to find him before the killings.
“This is the absolute worst outcome for a stalking case,” Lowe said at a media briefing on Friday afternoon. “This is every victim, every detective, every police chief’s worst nightmare.”
In a written statement, the police department said on Friday that the suspect began communicating with Sadeghi after listening to her podcasts. Lowe clarified that the two became acquainted because he heard her in an audio chatroom on the app Clubhouse, where he said she facilitated a discussion for Farsi speakers seeking work in the tech industry.
Sadeghi’s mother called police around 1.45am on Friday after escaping the home and running to a neighbour’s house.
Arriving officers saw Naseri collapse in the doorway of the home and pulled him outside, discovering he had been shot, Lowe said.
They performed CPR, but he died at the scene. Inside the home, officers found Sadeghi and the suspect dead.
Khodakaramrezaei befriended Sadeghi in the online chat room in late 2021.
Lowe said the two met up in person last summer before the contacts escalated into harassing phone calls and threats.
At one point he showed up at their home unwanted with flowers, Lowe said.
