X

Yahoo engineer ID'd in murder-suicide

The man police say killed five members of his family before turning the gun on himself had worked at the Internet giant since 2004.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
Expertise I have more than 30 years' experience in journalism in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Steven Musil

The man who police say killed five members of his family before turning the gun on himself in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday was identified Tuesday as an engineer at Yahoo, according to an Associated Press report.

Devan Kalathat, who had worked at the Internet giant since 2004 as an analytics engineer, shot his 11-year-old son, Akhil Dev; his 4-year-old daughter, Negha Dev; his brother-in-law, 35-year-old Ashok Appu Poothemkandi; his sister-in-law, 25-year-old Suchitra Sivaraman; and the couple's daughter, 11-month-old Ahana Ashok, according to the report.

Kalathat's wife is the only survivor and remains in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds, according to the report. Police do not yet have a motive for the shootings, but said there was no reason to believe Kalathat was in danger of losing his job.

Poothemkandi arrived in the United States from India with his wife and daughter about two weeks ago to work for one year at Hewlett-Packard, police told the AP.