In emails, man arrested in LA shootings accused Jewish classmates of creating COVID-19 pandemic
Suspect spun conspiracy about Persian Jews inventing COVID to foment prejudice against Asians

Suspected Pico-Robertson shooter Jaime Tran sent this email to classmates on Nov. 25, 2022. Illustration by Benyamin Cohen
The man who police have charged with shooting two Jewish men on their way home from morning prayers in Los Angeles last week recently sent emails to his former dental school classmates saying that the COVID-19 pandemic was a Jewish conspiracy developed by their class president.
In a series of several emails sent in November and December of 2022, the suspect, Jaime Tran, told dozens of former classmates at the UCLA School of Dentistry that Persian Jews invented the conspiracy to increase prejudice against Asians like him. He attached a picture of a propaganda flyer blaming Jews for the pandemic that has been disseminated across the U.S.
“If you were ever inconvenienced and/or denied entry because of the masking policy or the proof of vaccination policy, you should be upset at the Iranian Jew,” Tran, 28, wrote in a Dec. 31, 2022, email sent to a listserv of 66 members of the dental school’s Class of 2021, a copy of which one of the recipients shared with the Forward. “If you, or a loved one’s business lost revenue by the lockdowns, you should be upset at the Iranian Jew.”
Classmates said that Tran was expelled from the school in 2018. Officials there did not respond to a reporter’s inquiry on Tuesday.
Tran was arrested Thursday, hours after the second shooting on consecutive days in the heavily Orthodox Pico-Robertson section of Los Angeles, and charged with two counts of committing hate crimes. Both victims sustained minor injuries.
Court documents say Tran, who was caught about 130 miles east of where the shootings took place, had a handgun and an “AK-style” rifle, and that he told the authorities he had been living out of his car for the last year. Filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office, the criminial complaint says that Tran told investigators he had chosen his targets — both Sephardic Jewish men who had just left morning prayer services — by their “head gear.”

The emails provide a window into his possible motives, suggesting he has held a grudge against Jews stemming from a 2017 classroom-training incident in which Tran erred while practicing an anesthesia-injection procedure.
During the procedure, Tran wrote in an email sent on Nov. 25, 2022, “I got my elbow bumped into. This made the needle dislodged and made Joseph bleed.” He said he was in the hospital “for personal reasons” a few months later, adding: “You don’t need to know why. I left the school shortly after.”
“The Persian Jews of the Class of 2020 were extremely prejudiced towards me during my time at UCLA,” Tran wrote in the email. “They are responsible for colluding together to make up a fake disease and claiming the origin as China just to make everyone even more prejudiced towards Asians.
“In short, they completely bs’d a whole pandemic based off that incident.”
According to the criminal complaint, Tran’s emails followed months of targeted antisemitic abuse of the former class president, who is a Persian Jew.
In a stream of profanity-filled voicemails and text messages sent between August and November of last year, Tran called the former classmate a “worthless senseless Jew,” and told him, “Someone is going to kill you, Jew.” He included a photograph of a gas chamber.
That student declined to be interviewed.
Another member of the class, Kian Yaghoubnejad, said in an interview that the consensus among dental students at the time was that Tran was experiencing acute mental health issues, including depression made worse by his failure to complete dental school.
Yaghoubnejad, a Persian Jew who grew up in Pico-Robertson, said he had never imagined that Tran could turn violent, and now wonders if he should have called the police.
“I just thought he’s angry and typing away,” Yaghoubnejad said. “I didn’t think he’s gonna come get a gun and shoot five minutes down the street from where I live.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 3
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 4
News Why Zohran Mamdani believes he’ll win over Jewish voters, as Israel critic surges to second behind Cuomo in NYC mayoral race
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward A Jewish nonprofit may have accidentally caused Michigan to drop charges against pro-Palestinian activists
-
Culture For Christian nationalists, Trump’s pope picture isn’t a joke
-
Opinion Is Israel really going to reoccupy Gaza? Ask Trump
-
Yiddish World A photo of my bubbe when Jewish stores still had Yiddish signs
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.