A Seattle podcast host and her husband were killed after an alleged stalker from Texas broke into their upscale home in suburban Seattle Friday morning, March 10, and fatally shot them before turning the gun on himself.
The 38-year-old trucker climbed through a window of the couple’s home in Redmond at about 2 a.m. and opened fire, KING 5 reported.
The Daily Mail identified the shooter as Ramin Khodakaramrezaei and the couple as Zohreh Sadeghi, 33, and her husband, Mohammed Naseri, 35.
Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, the alleged gunman, became a fan of Zohreh Sadeghi’s podcast, the specific show has not yet been confirmed, and began a friendly communication with her, slowly becoming obsessed with the host.
At some point the conversation and messages they shared turned concerning and, according to local police, Sadeghi visited the station to inquire about filing a restraining order against the listener.
The slain woman’s mother had an altercation with the gunman before she fled to a neighbor to call 911.
When police arrived, they found Naseri lying on the front lawn with a gunshot wound to the chest. They gave him CPR but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sadeghi and Khodakaramrezaei were found dead inside the home.
Redmond police spokeswoman Jill Green said the assailant died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he had been stalking the podcaster for ‘many months.
‘Apparently he got to know her because of a podcast that she was doing and they struck up kind of a friendship, talked,’ she said.
‘But then he began to just send a lot of messages to the point that she decided to disengage and talk to us and our investigators in getting a restraining order,’ Green said.
She added that police could not serve the trucker with the order ‘because we weren’t able to make contact with him’ in Texas.
It was not immediately clear when Sadeghi filed the no-contact restraining order and when her stalker arrived in Washington state.
‘It’s just unfortunate that the stalking ended in such a tragic way,’ Green said.