indica News Bureau-
An Indian-American product manager at Google was arrested on Wed., Feb. 19 by the Hawaii Island Police on suspicion of murder after he reported his wife missing and a body was found on a nearby beach.
The man, Sonam Saxena, 43, was arrested on the count of murder in the second-degree and was being held at the Kealakehe Police Station as the investigation into the death of his wife, Smriti Saxena, 41, continued, police said in a statement..
Sonam on Tuesday filed a missing person report with police in Anaeuhoomalu Bay, Hawaii, begging them to help him find his wife, who had gone missing. The couple were on a vacation in Hawaii, and they were spending time on the beach when Smriti got an asthma attack, Saxena told police on Tuesday.
Smriti had an asthma attack in the evening, and her husband walked back to the Waikoloa Beach Marriot Resort to get his wife’s asthma inhaler, and when he returned, her phone and purse were still on the beach but Smitri was gone, reported Business Insider.
The product manager tweeted a plea for help to find his wife on Wednesday and also gave an interview to West Hawaii Today, according to published reports.
According to the press release by Hawaii Police, Saxena has been arrested on the count of murder in the second- degree after they discovered a female body on the beach, “in the general area where Smriti was reported as a missing person and last seen Tuesday evening.” The police arrested Saxena late night Wednesday.
A Hawaii Island Police spokesperson told Business Insider that an autopsy is scheduled to determine a cause of death. Police have yet to positively ID the body. Smitri and Sonam both lived and worked in the Seattle area, where he worked for Google and Smitri worked for Microsoft. Saxena moved to Seattle from India in 2008, initially working at Skykick, a cloud computing company.
According to one of his co-workers, the product manager was known in the office for being personable and outgoing.
Business Insider reported that Skykick engineer Jianguo Jiang said, “Skykick is a small company, and he was always very pleasant to talk to, very conversational.” Jiang’s daughter, Irene Jiang, is a Business Insider food reporter.
Jiang said he rarely heard Sonam discuss his personal life or family, and that he never heard anything to suggest that there was marital strife between the couple. “This is a surprise to me, I wouldn’t expect it. I would not imagine he’d do it,” Jiang said, added BI.
Comments from Google and Microsoft regarding the case are awaited.
