AP – A University of North Carolina (UNC) graduate student walked into a classroom building, shot his faculty adviser and quickly left, authorities said a day after the attack paralysed campus as police searched for the gunman.
Tailei Qi, 34, was charged on Tuesday with first-degree murder and having a gun on educational property in Monday’s killing of Zijie Yan inside a science building at the state’s flagship public university.
Chapel Hill police arrested Qi without force in a residential neighbourhood near campus within two hours of the attack, UNC Police Chief Brian James said at a news conference.
Investigators were trying to determine a motive and searching for the gun, James said.
He declined to specify where in Caudill Labs Yan was killed, saying officers are still looking at evidence. Qi was already gone when a team of officers reached the building, James said.
“Yan was a beloved colleague, mentor and a friend of so many on our campus and a father to two young children,” UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz at the news conference.
Yesterday afternoon, the school’s iconic Bell Tower will ring in honour of Yan’s memory and students are encouraged to take a moment of silence, he said. The school also cancelled classes until today. Earlier on Tuesday, Qi briefly appeared in Orange County Superior Court in Hillsborough. Judge Sherri Murrell ordered Qi to remain jailed without bond and scheduled his next court date for September 18.
After the hearing, Qi bowed to the judge, his Mandarin interpreter, public defender Dana Graves and the guards who took him away in handcuffs.
Graves left court without talking to reporters and did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Yan was an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences who had worked for the university since July 2019, Guskiewicz said on Tuesday.
He led the Yan Research Group, which Qi joined last year, according to the group’s UNC webpage.
Yan was a respected and approachable professor and research advisor who was deeply knowledgeable about the field, said graduate Wen Liu who worked in the lab for three years.
He was somewhat reserved, yet always willing to answer questions with patience and respect and advise lab members who got stuck in their research, Liu said.
