Man Charged for Allegedly Raping, Killing Indian Dentistry Student in San Francisco

A man has been charged for raping and murdering an Indian dentistry student in San Francisco Bay Area in 2015. Keith Kenard Asberry Jr., 33, of Antioch, was charged on March 9 for killing 37-year-old Sikh Indian woman Randhir Kaur.

The woman was raped and shot in her apartment. She was discovered on March 8, 2015, by her cousin after UC San Francisco officials became concerned about her well-being after she missed several meetings. She had spent the day at a gurdwara and had planned to spend the evening studying. She was reportedly found in a pool of blood at her apartment with a single gunshot wound in the head.

There were no signs of forced entry into her apartment. Her belongings were found in a trash can almost two miles from her apartment in Albany, California.

The accused, Asberry, has been in custody since 2015 for six other crimes and was charged on March 9, 2018 with murder with special circumstance by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. He is being held without bail at Santa Rita jail in Dublin, Calif., according to Alameda County’s inmate locator. Asberry is scheduled to enter a plea on March 28.

He is linked to other crimes of a similar nature. In 2005, Asberry allegedly sexually assaulted a victim during a home invasion in El Cerrito, Calif. He is also accused of sexually assaulting two teenage girls near Berkeley High School, kidnapping them at gunpoint, in 2008, and attacking a woman in her home in Berkeley, California, in 2015.

In February 2015, a 46-year-old woman was the victim of an attempted sexual assault in Berkeley. The police tested the rape kit from the attack and it matched with Asberry. The police had reportedly failed to test the rape kit of 2008 that could have matched with Asberry’s and put him behind bars. His data was in the national database since he was convicted felon.

Kaur hailed from Rupnagar, Punjab, and would have graduated in June 2016. She was the daughter of a senior lawyer in Rupnagar. His family had flown in the next day to take her body back to India.