Two arrests have been made months after a Los Angeles doctor was gunned down in front of his practice.
Evan Hardman, 41, of Tomball, Texas, and Ashley Rose Sweeting, 40, of Reseda, California, were arrested and booked on suspicion of murder on Tuesday for the August 23 death of Dr. Hamid Mirshojae.
Hardman was taken into custody in the Houston area, while Sweeting was found in the San Fernando Valley, according to Fox Los Angeles. Despite Hardman’s arrest in Texas, his most recent address is listed in West Hills, California.
It is unclear what their relationship to Mirshojae is or what their alleged motive was.
The doctor, 61, died outside of Woodland Hills Medical Clinic and Urgent Care on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in August after being shot on the way to his car.
The father-of-four was shot dead from point-blank range in broad daylight.
His wife and their six-month-old baby were in Turkey at the time of the murder.
Police believe it was a targeted hit as the shooter was seen walking around the parking lot for an hour before shooting the doctor, according to CBS News.
Evan Hardman, 41, of Tomball, (right) and Ashley Rose Sweeting, 40, of Reseda, (left) were arrested and booked on Tuesday for the death of Dr. Hamid Mirshojae.
Mirshojae, an urgent and emergency care doctor who also treated drug and alcohol addiction, had also been the victim of a beating that saw a gang of men set upon him with baseball bats just months earlier.
But while his marriage – Mirshojae’s second – appears to have been happy, DailyMail.com can reveal the fallout from the first has been a torturous series of legal fights, with Mirshojae accusing ex Ahang Kelk, 54, of pursuing a ‘vendetta’ against him and making threats to kill him.
The legal fight, which began in 2009 when the couple divorced, expanded to include two fraud cases, a civil harassment battle, four applications for restraining orders and the repeated reopening of their divorce case – most recently in January.
Both Kelk and Mirshojae – whose online biography says ‘his patients include celebrities, movie stars, athletes and many people of different walks of life’ – have at different times obtained restraining orders against each other.
The doctor complained in a 2017 application that one order awarded to his former wife had forced him to leave the $6million six-bedroom Calabasas home where she still lives.
In May, Mirshojae sued his ex-wife for fraud – claiming she had transferred her assets to her mother and other family members in a bid to hide them from him and prevent him getting his hands on settlement cash he had been awarded in previous trials.
The pair were due to face off again in August in a hearing about the fraud case which is a dispute about her alleged failure to pay the $270,000 settlement he was awarded from a 2021 case where he again accused her of fraud and of running an illegal marijuana dispensary out of a building both had interests in.
He had also made an application for a further $600,000 in attorney fees that remains pending and accused her of breaching a settlement agreement the pair came to in 2017.
The doctor, 61, died outside of Woodland Hills Medical Clinic and Urgent Care on Topanga Canyon Boulevard on August 23 after being shot on the way to his car
The father-of-four was shot dead from point-blank range in broad daylight
Mirshojae, an urgent and emergency care doctor who also treated drug and alcohol addiction, had been the victim of a beating that saw a gang of men set upon him with baseball bats just months earlier
Kelk was criminally prosecuted over the dispensary in 2022 but records seen by DailyMail.com show the charges were dismissed.
The 2021 case details how the former couple’s relationship dramatically declined after Mirshoejae fired her from his medical practice in 2016.
According to the complaint, Kelk vowed to wreck his business following her firing as office manager after she allegedly embezzled more than $600,000 from the surgery.
While a judge ordered in Mirshojae’s favor, the current case is over Kelk’s alleged failure to pay up.
Kelk has also repeatedly reopened their divorce case, with the extreme nature of the ex-couple’s legal war resulting in Judge Steve Cochran’s weary declaration that ‘the cost of this litigation became unreasonable long ago’ in February.
On that occasion, Kelk asked for support payments for their youngest son Jason, 21, despite him being an adult; claiming he is unable to work.
Despite their ongoing fight, Kelk appeared to be devastated by his death on social media.
Her warm words strike a very different note to the wads of court filings that have piled up between them over the years, with the pair battling it out over money, her behavior and the use of commercial property both had interests in.
His first marriage has been a torturous series of legal fights, with Mirshojae accusing ex Ahang Kelk, 54, of pursuing a ‘vendetta’ against him and making threats to kill him (pictured: the doctor and his second wife)
The legal fight, which began in 2009 when the couple divorced, has subsequently expanded to include two fraud cases, a civil harassment battle, four applications for restraining orders and the repeated reopening of their divorce case – most recently in January
Shortly after the pair decided to divorce in 2009, Mirshojae applied for a restraining order against his wife and tried to keep her away from their $6million marital home.
In the petition, in which Mirshojae said the split was ‘due to physical violence’, he accused Kelk of punching him repeatedly.
Eight years later, the dad-of-four returned to court looking for another restraining order – again due to Kelk’s behavior.
According to Mirshojae, angry Kelk showed up at his clinic in December 2016 where, he claimed, she proceeded to physically assault him.
Her former fiancé Allen Yadegar was also there for the altercation and, according to the papers, claimed to have a weapon and said ‘he was going to kill’ Mirshojae.
Yadegar was also named in some of the lawsuits, includingtwo of the three restraining orders.
In one from 2017, Mirshojae said he and Yadegar had taken protective orders out against each other while the same year, his son Nick also obtained an order keeping the 45-year-old and his mother away from him.
The 61-year-old doctor claimed his ex-wife tried to break into the clinic in January 2017 and impersonated him to access the business’s Wells Fargo checking accounts from which she took $50,000 to pay off her personal credit cards.
Both Kelk and Mirshojae – whose online biography says ‘his patients include celebrities, movie stars, athletes and many people of different walks of life’ – have at different times obtained restraining orders against each other
He also accused her of taking two company cars worth more than $200,000 and of destroying a third car by removing the coolant and then driving it at top speed – causing more than $14,000-worth of damage.
On top of that, he claimed Kelk had stolen his personal SUV and, when he attempted to retrieve it, called the cops claiming he possessed a handgun and had threatened to shoot her.
The legal battles also affected the pair’s relationship with their three children, with eldest son Nick also taking a restraining order out against his mother and her fiancé.
In August 2017, Nick, then 19, said a dispute arose over yet another car owned by Mirshojae’s clinic which Kelk attempted to remove from his home.
According to court papers, Kelk allegedly launched a vicious attack on her son that included pulling chunks of his hair out and punching and scratching him.
Along with Yadegar, she then ripped a hole in his pants to get hold of the keys before Yadegar drove off in the vehicle – but not before allegedly hitting Nick with it on the way out.
The teenager also accused his mother of surveilling his Moorpark home and claimed she had stolen $400,000 from a trust fund set up in his name.
Along with providing a home for Nick, Mirshojae, who recently remarried and has a six-month-old baby with his second wife, was paying the mortgage for a property in Irvine where daughter Hanna lives.
Mourners and loved ones of Dr. Hamid Mirshojae have created a memorial in the parking lot of the clinic where he was killed
Court papers show the wealthy doctor was raking in more than $72,000-a-month from the proceeds of his three clinics and rental properties he owns.
He also purchased a home in Canoga Park for youngest son Jason and had provided him with an investment account worth more than $1m but was still hit with Kelk reopening their divorce agreement to demand he pay monthly adult support for their son in January.
Papers seen by DailyMail.com show Mirshojae furiously pointing out that his ex-wife and son ‘live a wealthy lifestyle’ that sees Kelk spend more than $30,000-a-month – much of it funded by Yadegar and her mother, both of whom he claims she transferred her assets to.
In the judgment against Kelk’s cash grab, Judge Cochran agreed that both Jason and his mother own his assets and denied her bid for extra cash while ordering Mirshojae to pony up $95,000 to pay his ex-wife’s lawyers.