Haiyang Zhu
Haiyang Zhu was a Chinese graduate student from Ningbo, China at Virginia Tech University, until he attacked, killed, and decapitated fellow VT student Xin Yang, a student from Beijing who had arrived at Virginia Tech just two weeks before. Yang, 22, had just moved to VT to begin her post-graduate work. Zhu had been helping her to adjust to life in Blacksburg, Virginia, and fell in love with her. He professed his love for her, and she told him that she already had a boyfriend that she intended to marry. Zhu went out, bought a knife, and then, upon meeting Yang at an Au Bon Pain cafe at the Graduate Life Center on Virginia Tech's campus, attacked her and beheaded her as 7 people watched.
Zhu has recently been brought to court, where he pled guilty to first degree murder and now faces life imprisonment. The case is a strange one, and has been receiving a particularly large amount of attention due to the recent 2007 killings on Virginia Tech's campus, in which a gunman went on a rampage across campus, killing 32 students and professors before killing himself.
The case has caused a fair amount of racial backlash on the Virginia Tech campus, as the killer in the now-infamous Virginia Tech killings, Seung-Hui Cho, was also Asian, though Cho was Korean rather than Chinese.
The full story is this:
Zhu had started his doctoral work at Virginia as a candidate for a degree in agriculture and applied economics in the fall of 2008, and met Yang shortly after she arrived in America to attend Virginia Tech for her graduate work on January 8, 2009, just two weeks before the killing. Zhu fell in love with her, and wrote a letter proclaiming his love and asking her to be his girlfriend. She turned him down, saying that she already had a boyfriend she intended to marry. Upon being turned down, Zhu went to a store and bought a large kitchen knife and a claw hammer, then tried to call Yang twelve times before going to the cafe to attempt to find her on January 21, 2009. When he found her there, the two talked for a bit, and witnesses said that there was no yelling, no fighting, before Zhu suddenly stabbed at Yang, who tried to fend him off, sustaining multiple defensive injuries to her arms and hands, before Zhu grabbed her hair, and cut her throat. She fell to the floor and stopped moving, and he proceeded to cut her head off completely. The police arrived within a minute of receiving the first 911 call, and found Zhu holding the Yangs head by her hair. He is said to have been totally calm.
Upon being arrested, Zhu was charged with first-degree (premeditated) murder. He wrote a second letter saying that he had killed Yang, and that he did because he "loved her too much," and that she should've made the "sensible decision and that Xin should have chosen him over her fiance," saying that his status and education would have made him a better match for her.
Seven people witnessed the murder, but police say no one stepped in to try and stop the murder. He did not put up any resistance to the police officer who arrested him, and, 11 months later, in December 21, 2009, Zhu pleaded guilty to the crimes. He was found guilty after a quick proceeding, and is in jail, awaiting sentencing. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, but Virginia can not give him the death penalty, and, if they did, likely wouldn't due to his pleading guilty.
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger has spoken out about racist messages posted online or through e-mail or from calls into the University, saying that the minority population at Virginia Tech has, in terms of crime, a very good track records, and that the two Asian murderers should not be seen as a trend.
He is referring to Seung-Hui Cho, the notorious murderer of 32 students and professors on the April 16, 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. Cho had also been infatuated with a fellow student, and when she spurned his advances, he killed her and another student, and then two hours later, went on an all-out rampage in a building at Virginia Tech, killing 30 other people, wounding 17, and sending manifestos, pictures, and videos to news networks, comparing himself to Christ and the Columbine killers. The incident is the single worst single-shooter incident in the U.S. during peacetime.
The Zhu incident showed, however, that the VT alert system works, as it sent warning messages through SMS and text messages telling students to be on alert, as a murder had occurred on campus. Other campuses around the United States have adopted similar warning systems, while others have campaigned for concealed carry laws to be passed on college campuses for protection. Other groups have campaigned directly against this.
What will come from Yang's beheading is yet to be seen. It's hard to have security checks on an open campus, so it's unlikely that there will be any more security measures taken, except possibly greater outreach to foreign exchange students and increased student psychological services. Virginia Tech has taken significant steps to improve safety on the VT campus, but were criticized after the massacre as not having a proper response system in place to protect against such attacks. It is unclear what more security will do to help in cases such as Zhu's.
Regardless, it is likely that Zhu will go to prison for the rest of his life. There is no parole in Virginia, so there's no chance of him getting out earlier in his sentence, and it's likely there will be absolutely no leniency in his case, with the taste of the Virginia Tech massacres still on the mouths of Blacksburg prosecutors and judges. He will be sentenced on April 19, 2010, and will be waiting in jail until that time.
