Eagan shooter was victim’s ex-husband
Police say Robin Bhattacharyya killed his ex-wife, her new husband, then himself
by Erin Johnson
Thisweek Newspapers
It was the female victim’s ex-husband, police said, who fired a shotgun through the front window of an Eagan couple’s home Aug. 10, killing them both before killing himself.
Investigators said Robin Bhattacharyya, 29, of Minneapolis shot and killed Charles Hanson, 42, and Svetlana Hanson, 25, around 10 p.m. He then shot himself.
Bhattacharyya is Svetlana Hanson’s ex-husband.
He shot the couple at their home on the 1300 block of Berry Ridge Drive while their three children slept in another room.
Svetlana Hanson’s father was also inside the home at the time of the shooting and was unharmed.
Identifying the suspect was difficult because he shot himself in the head with the same 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun he used to kill the victims, police said.
But the body matched a physical description of Bhattacharyya, and police found Bhattacharyya’s car parked near the crime scene and his car keys on the body.
Police searched Bhattacharyya’s home the day after the shootings.
A former employee at Intel Corporation, Bhattacharyya was self-employed at the time of his death.
According Bhattacharyya’s Facebook page, he was a 1999 graduate of Maple Grove High School.
He had a master’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Minnesota, and was working toward his Ph.D. in computer science at the same school.
Police said they have not established a motive and have had no prior contact with Bhattacharyya. He has no known criminal history.
Erin Johnson is at eagan.thisweek@ecm-inc.com.
