Man charged in Randhir Kaur’s murder

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Keith Kenard Asberry Jr., 33, of Antioch, California was charged on Friday, March 9 for the murder of Randhir Kaur, a 37-year-old Indian international student who was attending University of California at San Francisco School of Dentistry where she was studying to become a doctor of dental surgery and was to graduate in June 2016, according to an East Bay Times report.

According to a Berkeleyside report, Kaur was found dead in her apartment just blocks from the Berkeley border, on March 9, 2015, after being fatally shot.

The Albany Police Department said that officials at the University of California in San Francisco had become “concerned” about Kaur’s absence when she didn’t show up for appointments and eventually asked a relative to check up on her, who discovered Kaur’s lifeless body in pool of blood at her home and called the police.

Officials said that detectives initially could not find a suspect or a motive in the killing, but they were able to find some of Kaur’s belongings in a garbage can in Richmond, California.

Authorities also noted that Kaur’s muder had taken place just less than two weeks after Asberry had attacked a North Berkeley woman in her home in broad daylight as a part of a home-invasion burglary attempt and at the time weren’t able to catch him but eventually did months later during a traffic stop, according to a Berkeleyside report.

Berkeleyside also reported that Asberry had been previously convicted of two unreported sexual assaults of two teenagers, a 15-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman, near Berkeley High School in 2008 as well as a 2005 sexual assault and home-invasion case in El Cerrito, all of which were revealed by a DNA testing of Asberry’s blood, tying the crimes together.

According to East Bay Times, Asberry had been held without bail on the sexual assault cases since June 2015 and is scheduled to enter a plea to the murder charge on March 28 along with a pretrial hearing on the other cases on Friday, March 16.

In a statement after her death, UCSF had described Kaur as a “treasured member of the school community who would be deeply missed,” after which a memorial service was held for her.

According to a Berkeleyside report, on the day of the murder, Kaur had just returned from praying at the El Sobrante Sikh temple and was shot once in the head by Asberry a few hours later.

In a press release on Monday, March 13, the Albany Police Department said that the investigation was an “exhaustive three-year investigation” and thanked Kaur’s family “for their patience, understanding and support” over the years.