[Faculty] Fwd:

[Subrata (Sooby) Bhattacharjee]

Dear Colleagues,

About 20 years ago, Mr Davidson gunned down three faculty of ME and AE
dept, Preston Lowrey, Costas Lyrinthsis, and Chen Liang. Although many of
you were not here at that time, you probably have heard of this terrible
tragedy. I was fixing a code and told them I would be slightly late to the
thesis defense (it was very common at that time for faculty outside the
committee to attend thesis defense) where this awful incident unfolded.
When I was ready to go join them, I was interrupted by  a police officer
who escorted me out of my room.

The families were merciful in agreeing not to pursue death penalty on the
promise that the killer would remain behind bar for his lifetime. Now I am
stunned to hear from Kendal, Preston's son, that Gov. Brown will even
consider a commutation appeal from this killer.

This deranged killer kept a diary in which he wrote about every  professor
who ever  taught him  as a conspirator against him and kept updating his
kill list.

I am sure you would agree that such a person should not be on the street or
anywhere other than behind bar.

Even if you did not get a chance to meet any of these three most wonderful
people I have ever befriended in my life (Preston Lowery was my mentor and
friend), I urge  you to find the time to send a letter to the Governor as
requested by Kendall below.
Thanks,

Sooby

Subrata (Sooby) Bhattacharjee, Ph.D., ASME Fellow
Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department
Affiliated Professor, Computer Science Department
San Diego State University

prof.bhattacharjee at gmail.com
Tel: (619)-594-6080; Fax: (619)-594-3599; Office: E323-K; Lab: E-331

Thermodynamics Courseware: http://www.thermofluids.net
Research Website: http://flame.sdsu.edu <http://mechanical.sdsu.edu>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kendall Lowrey <kendall.lowrey at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 1:24 PM
Subject:
To: Bhattacharjee Sooby & Keya <prof.bhattacharjee at gmail.com>,
Bhattacharjee Sooby & Keya <subrata at thermo.sdsu.edu>


Hi Sooby, I hope this email finds you well!

I wanted to first let you know that Frederick Davidson has applied with
Gov. Jerry Brown for a commutation of sentence, which unlike most law
things seems to be pretty vague in the future implications of his jail
sentence and status. Regardless, the SD District Attorney's office
contacted all the victim's families; we have the option of submitting a
written record of our feelings for the case / situation that the Governor
(or his people) should take into account when considering the commutation.
I wanted to extend this to you and the SDSU Mech-E department if you or
anyone you'd like to forward this email to has something they would like to
express regarding this situation. If so, letters can be sent to the CA
governor:

Governor Jerry Brown
State of California
Attn: Legal Affairs Secretary
State Capital, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814

And a copy should be sent to the SD district attorney for their records; I
can also collect the letters to submit to the DA's office.

Attn: Office of District Attorney
PO Box 121011
San Diego, CA 92112-9910
Crystal O'Neill

I believe they will organize all information based on the case number: *Case
#SCD120404 * There's no requirement to write anything, but I just wanted
other people who may not have been contacted to also have a chance to say
something.

Anyway, enough of that. How is everything down in San Diego? How is your
research going / what are you working on these days? From the looks of it
there's a lot of computer simulation involved? I'm currently in my 4th year
of PhD at UW doing robotics / AI & ML work in the CS department, trying to
get robots to be less silly and more capable. How are your kids? I'm sure
they're still smart as hell and studying hard themselves :) UW has a strong
CS program for graduate school, if they're interested!

Kendall
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