Beheading at Virginia Tech!
Posted by Carlos C. on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
BLACKSBURG, Va. – A graduate student from China was decapitated with a kitchen knife in a campus cafe at Virginia Tech by another graduate student who knew her, police said Thursday.
Xin Yang, 22, was killed Wednesday night after arriving at the campus from Beijing on Jan. 8 to begin studying accounting, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.
Her accused attacker, 25-year-old Haiyang Zhu of Ningbo, China, knew the victim but no motive for the slaying has been determined, Flinchum said. School records showed that Haiyang was listed as one of Xin’s emergency contacts.
Haiyang was charged with first-degree murder and was being held without bond at the Montgomery County Jail. His attorney, Stephanie Cox, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Haiyang and Xin had been having coffee in a cafe in the Graduate Life Center, where Xin was living. About seven other people who were in the coffee shop told police that the two hadn’t been arguing before the attack.
Police received two 911 calls shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, Flinchum said, and were on the scene in a little more than a minute to take Haiyang into custody.
Flinchum said Haiyang was not known to the campus police or to the university team that deals with mentally disturbed students.
University officials said Haiyang arrived on campus last fall and was a Ph.D. student in agricultural and applied economics.
The stabbing was the first killing on campus since a mass killing on campus in 2007, when a student gunman shot 32 people and then took his own life.
“An act of violence like this brings back memories of April 16,” university President Charles Steger said. “I have no doubt that many of us feel especially distraught.”
University spokesman Larry Hincker said a campus alert system put in place after the mass shootings by Seung-Hui Cho in 2007 sent out messages to 30,000 subscribers by e-mail, text messages and telephone voice mails Wednesday night.
Because a suspect was in custody, the messages were sent out as notifications rather than as emergency alerts, he said.
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine offered condolences to the campus.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Xin Yang today — and with the broader Virginia Tech community,” he said in a statement. “The tragic attack on campus this week has no doubt revived terrible memories for countless members of the Hokie family.”
This happened last night!
Seven people watched Zhu decapitate Yang with a kitchen knife in the school cafe! And no one made an attempt to stop this?
More from Roanoke.com
When Virginia Tech authorities arrived Wednesday night at a cafe inside the Graduate Life Center, they found a decapitated female victim who had arrived on campus just two weeks ago and a young man they have now charged with killing her.
Authorities, including Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum, outlined some of the gruesome details of Wednesday night’s murder on campus at a press conference this morning.
They said Xin Yang, a 22-year-old graduate student from Beijing, arrived Jan. 8 to begin her studies in accounting at the Pamplin College of Business. She lived in the graduate life center.
Haiyang Zhu, 25, a graduate student from China, was charged late Wednesday with first-degree murder and is being held without bond. He is a Ph.D. graduate student majoring in agricultural and applied economics. He began his studies at Virginia Tech at the start of the 2008 fall semester. Tech officials said the victim and suspect knew each other and Yang listed Zhu as an emergency contact.
Flinchum said the two were sitting at a table at the Au Bon Pain cafe in the Graduate Life Center when the disturbance began. There were seven witnesses to the events and two called 911 at 7:06 p.m.
When authorities arrived less than two minutes later, they discovered Yang’s dead body, Zhu and a large kitchen knife that they believe is the murder weapon. Zhu did not resist arrest. There is no record of him being called to the attention of Tech or Blacksburg police or the university’s threat assessment or CARE team before Wednesday.
Classes were not canceled today and the graduate life center is open. The windows and glass doors of Au Bon Pain are blocked from the inside and the cafe is closed.
Holy crap!
Hat Tip: The Jawa Report
(1 Ratings)
Filed Under: = BREAKING NEWS =, Crime
How terrible to happen to such a beautiful woman! It is soo sad....
Virginia allows CCW on campus … how many more victims before Virginia Tech wakes up ?
Maybe Congress will save us from ourselves by passing a bill outlawing kitchen knives. Too bad it’s a gun free zone. Maybe someone practicing their Second Amendment right to bear arms could have saved her.
why don’t you get a clue you gun-toting retard. A stab to the heart or slicing her throat would have finished her long before anyone managed to even pull out a gun. Then again, maybe he could have just brought 2 guns instead of using a knife, just in case someone was there using their right to blah blah blah.
idiot.
“Me,”
You are the one without a clue. I’ll bet you’ve never fired a gun, either. Perhaps you’re one of the types that thinks of them as “icky?” Allow me to tell you a little bit about “guns” which are things I have plenty of experience with and I personally know people who have used them to save themselves from a violent crime without firing a shot… another story.
Guns are deadly weapons as are knives… the difference is tactics and potential damage. Typically, a shot or two to the chest will knock someone out instantly and perhaps even kill them. To easily kill someone as quickly with a knife, the perpetrator either has to be really “lucky” or know a bit about human anatomy. Most likely, as is the case with most stabbing attacks, it takes multiple and repetitive stabs to stop someone from moving, much less kill them. This is why you’ll typically hear of people being stabbed 20, 30, even 50 or more times in a stabbing homicide.
My point is, someone who was armed and was in a position to stop the attack most likely would’ve saved the victim’s life if not, prevented by threat of deadly force, the stabbing altogether. If the assailant had a gun, he likely would’ve tried to kill others… all the more reason that a well armed and law abiding population should not have their own rights to arm themselves restricted.
So you sir or madam (or anonymous chickensh*t) can pretend that arming law abiding citizens won’t make us safer but for the rest of us who actually have a smidgen of common sense, we understand that firearms in the hands of good people can and regularly do save lives and prevent crime. Some day, a “gun-toting retard” like me just might save you or someone you love’s life. Such a scenario will likely not make the evening news because a gun in the hands of a law abiding person prevented the kind of violent “shock news” that the media craves.
You don’t hear about to many incidents that were prevented by a gun because they likely ended without incident with the perp arrested or at the very worst, the only one that was killed.