Police: Truck driver stalked, killed a Washington couple
After stalking her for months, a Houston-area man traveled to Washington state and broke into a woman’s house with a gun, killing her, her husband and himself, police say.
Zohreh Sadeghi, 33, of Redmond, Wash., initially reported Ramin Khodakaramrezaei, 38, for stalking her in December 2022, according to Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe. The two met through an audio chatroom app called Clubhouse in a community of Farsispeaking individuals looking for tech jobs, he said. They then met up in person over the summer, the Associated Press reported, and Khodakaramrezaei began stalking Sadeghi in the fall.
Police identified the now-dead Khodakaramrezaei as a long haul truck driver from Texas who traveled across states frequently. County records from 2018 tie him to Harris County.
In November 2022, Sadeghi told her husband, Mohammad Milad Naseri, 35, that Khodakaramrezaei was threatening to end their marriage, according to court documents obtained by the Seattle Times. But Khodakaramrezaei continued to harass Sadeghi by calling and texting her husband, the Times reported.
Sadeghi contacted police again in mid-January 2023 because the stalking had “intensified,” according to Lowe. Khodakaramrezaei had begun to show up at her home in Redmond, mail her gifts and contact her up to 100 times a day, she told police before her death.
According to the Seattle Times, Khodakaramrezaei threatened to set Sadeghi’s house on fire and told her he would stop contacting her only if he died.
Around 1:45 a.m. Friday, Khodakaramrezaei broke into Sadeghi’s house through her mother’s bedroom window, Lowe said. Her mother was able to escape and flee to a neighbor’s house, where she called police.
When officers arrived at the house, Sadeghi’s husband met them in the doorway but then quickly collapsed, according to Lowe. It was then police realized he had been shot, he said.
Police searched the house and found Sadeghi dead in her bedroom from a gunshot wound, and Khodakaramrezaei also dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Lowe said. Paramedics later pronounced Naseri dead at the scene.
“This is the absolute worst outcome for a stalking case. This is every victim, every detective, every police chief ’s worst nightmare,” Lowe told media at a Friday briefing.
The couple sought a protection order against Khodakaramrezaei in early March, but it had yet to be served because Khodakaramrezaei’s career as a long haul truck driver made him difficult to locate, the police chief said.
Although investigators were aware of the stalking for months and did “everything possible” to keep Sadeghi and her family safe, Lowe said, he cautioned that protective orders can create a “false sense of security” for stalking victims.
“I would just remind the public that a restraining order is simply a piece of paper that allows officers to take enforcement action should a suspect violate the court order, but a piece of paper does not protect a person when someone is intent on causing them harm,” he said.
Sadeghi was a software engineer and was attending the University of Washington Tacoma for a doctorate in computer science and systems engineering, according to her LinkedIn. Naseri was a software engineer working at Amazon, according to his profile.
Both immigrated from Iran, and they had been married since 2011, the Seattle Times reported.