Several months before he was fatally shot outside his Woodland Hills doctor’s officeDr. Hamid Mirshojae was killed by three men who beat him with baseball bats, a staff member and police told The Times.
After the attack, the employee said Mirshojae told her he feared for his life.
“They came and they hit him with baseball bats. … They were some strangers that we didn’t know,” said the employee, who requested anonymity out of concern for her safety.
No arrests have been made in the case and the investigation is ongoing, said police, who did not reveal exactly when the attack occurred. It is not clear if the beating was related to Mirshojae’s killing last week. Los Angeles Police Det. Christine Moselle said detectives are aware of the earlier attack, which remains unsolved.
The revelation of the past violence against the doctor, who was mourned by the community as a caring and beloved practitioner, raised new questions about the shocking slaying that has rocked the Woodland Hills community.
Dr. Hamid Mirshojae was shot and killed Friday outside the Woodland Hills medical center where he worked.
(Noah Goldberg/Los Angeles Times)
As police continued their investigation on Tuesday, they said Mirshojae was the victim of a targeted killing and that a single gunman had taken the doctor’s life. The video showed the fatal shooting.
The doctor was walking from his clinic toward his Lexus, which was parked in the corner of the lot, around 5:30 p.m. when an assailant came running from the rear entrance of the parking lot and shot him at point-blank range.
Mirshojae likely did not see what happened because he was shot from behind, according to the employee, who reviewed surveillance video of the doctor’s final moments.
The employee had left the office 15 minutes before the killing. When she returned, after 7 p.m., the parking lot had been swarmed by police. She said she could see her boss’s legs scattered on the ground.
Moselle told The Times that the shooter likely did not exchange words with Mirshojae and that Mirshojae was “shot almost immediately.”
The video isn’t completely clear, but it appears the shooter was a man, Moselle said.
Investigators are looking into the doctor’s history and interactions for clues about who may have killed him and why, Moselle said. But so far the motive is still unknown, she says.