Inset: Dr. Hamid Mirshojae (Detox Woodland Hills). Background: The Los Angeles Police Department investigates the murder of Mirshojae, who was shot to death outside his detox clinic (KABC/YouTube).
The wife of a slain California doctor is suing his former wife after she allegedly hired a hitman to shoot him dead outside his treatment facility, where he reportedly helped celebrities and athletes overcome addiction.
Authorities say 53-year-old Ahang Mirshojae organized a posse to gun down her ex-husband, Dr. Hamid Mirshojae, 61, in an ambush-style murder in August 2024 outside his Los Angeles clinic.
Now the doctor”s wife, Ghazal Simorgh, is suing Ahang Mirshojae and others involved in the alleged plot in a wrongful death lawsuit.
Ahang Mirshojae divorced the victim around 2010. Simorgh married her doctor husband in 2022 and they have a young daughter together.
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“[O]ver the ensuing years subsequent to defendant Ahang’s divorce from Hamid Mirshojae, defendant Ahang engaged in a pattern of harassment, intimidation and aggression toward Hamid Mirshojae, driven largely by avarice and vengeance,” the lawsuit said.
Simorgh alleges the defendant “consistently demanded money” from the doctor “due to a combination of her own reckless spending, inability to manage her finances, and outright greed.”
She was “extremely jealous” that her ex-husband had gotten remarried and fathered another child, and wanted to “destroy” the plaintiffs’ lives, the suit claims.
The ex-wife “began to contrive” a scheme to have him killed for financial gain, the lawsuit says. She cobbled together a “gang of individuals,” including Evan Hardman, 41, Ashley Rose Sweeting, 41, Sarallah Jawed, 27, and Shawn Randolph, 46, to help her carry out the plan.
Simorgh alleges the murder was the result of “weeks of meticulous planning” by Ahang Mirshojae and Hardman, who enlisted the help of Sweeting, Jawed and Randolph.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced the filing of charges against the suspects in December.
“She’s been charged with, effectively, hiring a hitman,” Hochman said at a press conference.
Ahang Mirshojae is charged with murder and assault with a deadly weapon. According to Hochman, the ex-wife hired Hardman to sneak up behind the doctor as he left his Woodland Hills practice on August 23, 2024, and shoot him in the back of the head before a getaway driver — Sweeting — helped him flee the scene. Jawed drove Hardman to Texas after the murder, prosecutors say.
“The horror and betrayal of this crime are beyond words,” Hochman said in a statement. “The depth of the deceit and violence involved in this case is chilling, and we will not rest until justice is served.”
Hardman is accused of intentionally killing the victim by “lying in wait.” Sweeting, who is charged with accessory after the fact, allegedly drove Hardman to and from the scene. Hardman and Sweeting waited until Hamid Mirshojae walked out of his office around 5:30 p.m. and the alleged gunman carried out the murder as he was entering his car, prosecutors said.
Hochman also revealed that Ahang Mirshojae allegedly hired Hardman and Jawed to attack her ex-husband on May 3, 2024, and beat him with a blunt object, reportedly a baseball bat.
Dr. Mirshojae and his ex-wife have had a decade-long legal battle over their divorce, Los Angeles NBC affiliate KNBC reported, citing legal documents.
Revelations of the doctor’s ex-wife allegedly orchestrating the murder have left his family stunned.
“Immediately I start thinking about my nephews and nieces. Their father was killed, and now their mother was the cause. I still can’t digest it. I don’t understand. Taking somebody’s life, it’s beyond me,” his younger brother Alireza Mirshojae told KNBC. “It’s like I can’t understand how could somebody feel so much anger and resentment, and I don’t understand how someone would feel to do something like this.”
Officers arrested Hardman in the Houston area and Sweeting in the San Fernando Valley in December.
According to his biography on his website, Hamid Mirshojae worked in addiction medicine for over a decade and provided emergency care for 20 years. It said he treated “celebrities, movie stars, athletes and many people of different walks of life.”
“He has helped thousands of patients achieve their goal of having a sober life,” the bio said.
Local CW affiliate KTLA reported the doctor hailed from Iran. Friends and former patients spoke highly of him.
“Everyone in the Woodland Hills area, even in LA, they know him because he was a really good doctor,” family friend Maryem Alaei told KTLA in the aftermath of the shooting. “Always laughing, always joking, always helping people.”
Said former patient Pamia Mazahrei: “I don’t know why bad things happen to people who are good in this world.”
