Ahang Mirshojae pleaded not guilty this week to charges accusing her of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot that ended with her ex-husband, Dr. Hamid Mirshojae, shot to death outside his Woodland Hills urgent care clinic. The 54-year-old Calabasas resident is charged with murder, while alleged gunman Evan Hardman, 42, is set to be arraigned Tuesday on the same charge.
Dr. Mirshojae, 61, was found on the ground next to his white SUV in a parking lot in the 5900 block of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, dead from a gunshot wound to the head, according to NBC Los Angeles. Authorities said the doctor was ambushed outside his clinic on August 23, 2024, and surveillance video reportedly showed an assailant running toward him as he walked to his car before fleeing the scene. He specialized in emergency and osteopathic medicine at the Woodland Hills Medical Clinic & Urgent Care Center and had previously appeared on television as a medical expert, according to the San Fernando Valley Sun.
A Plot That Started With Watches and Grew Into $400,000
According to statements described in court, Hardman initially told investigators he was offered $20,000 to assault Ahang Mirshojae's ex-husband and steal two sentimental watches, before the plan escalated into a $400,000 murder-for-hire contract. Hardman has said the initial payment was supposed to be $50,000, and he allegedly told Ahang Mirshojae he had been directed to evict a tenant before instead being pushed toward attacking her former husband. He reportedly asked her outright, “You want me to kill him?” and she allegedly replied, “Yes.”
Ahang Mirshojae allegedly told Hardman, “I want to take him down … I want to take him all the way out,” and allegedly threatened to report him using surveillance footage from an unrelated break-in. After the shooting, she was described as “super excited as if she had won the Super Bowl,” per the same account. Hardman allegedly received a bag of money from her and later gave parts of the gun used in the killing to Ahang Mirshojae while discarding other pieces at two separate locations.
Judge Narrows Murder Charges, Clears Two Co-Defendants
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter found insufficient evidence to support murder charges against co-defendants Sarallah Jawed, 28, of Canoga Park, and Ashley Rose Sweeting, 41, of Reseda, ultimately ordering only Ahang Mirshojae and Evan Hardman to stand trial in Dr. Mirshojae's killing. Sweeting had been accused of driving Hardman to and from the crime scene and of acting as an accessory after the fact. Prosecutor Ben Schwartz said the office was not proceeding with the case against Sweeting at this juncture.
Jawed, who lives in Canoga Park, told police that Ahang Mirshojae was jealous of her ex-husband's happiness with his new wife and child. Jawed allegedly drove Hardman to Texas after the killing, and the two reportedly went to a casino together to gamble a significant amount of money. Hardman has lived in Tomball, Texas, and, per CBS Los Angeles, had a Los Angeles County criminal record dating back to 2002 that included a string of robbery convictions before he relocated to Texas.
The Baseball Bat Attack That Came First
The fatal shooting was not the first act of violence against Dr. Mirshojae. Months earlier, on May 3, 2024, he was ambushed and beaten with baseball bats outside his clinic, an attack that led to felony assault with a deadly weapon charges against Hardman and Jawed, according to the Los Angeles Times. Jawed resolved her role in that case on July 23, when she was sentenced to three years in state prison after pleading no contest to felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon and second-degree robbery, according to MyNewsLA.
Court records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times show Ahang Mirshojae filed for divorce from Dr. Mirshojae in 2009, with the split finalized in 2010. In February 2017, Dr. Mirshojae obtained a restraining order alleging she had physically assaulted him at his clinic two months earlier, in December 2016 — a documented history stretching back nearly a decade before his death.
Murder-for-Gain Charges Carry Life or Death Penalty Exposure
Prosecutors filed first-degree murder charges against Ahang Mirshojae and Evan Hardman that include special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and murder for financial gain under California Penal Code 190.2, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. Those special circumstances carry potential sentences of life imprisonment without parole or the death penalty.
A fifth person, Shawn Randolph of Valley Village, was arrested by LAPD in December 2024 and was later named in civil filings as the co-conspirator alleged to have supplied the untraceable ghost gun used in the shooting, according to FOX 11. That same outlet reported that at the time of her arrest, Ashley Rose Sweeting had more than a dozen criminal cases filed against her in Los Angeles County dating back to 2002, including convictions for burglary, grand theft, and battery, and was on diversion for a carjacking case, as previously reported by FOX 26 Houston.
Hoodline previously reported on the initial arrests in the case back in December 2024. Since then, the case has expanded into a separate civil track: in August 2025, Dr. Mirshojae's widow, Ghazal Simorgh, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Van Nuys Superior Court against Ahang Mirshojae and four co-defendants, alleging she fraudulently transferred assets under California's Uniform Voidable Transactions Act to shield them from financial liability. It remains an open question how prosecutors will present financial records to support the alleged $400,000 murder-for-hire contract as the criminal case against Ahang Mirshojae and Hardman moves toward trial.
