A graduate student at the University of North Carolina (UNC) was charged with murder on Tuesday after a faculty member was shot dead on campus.
Chinese national Tailei Qi, 34, was scheduled to appear in court later in the day. He was arrested on Monday afternoon in a nearby residential neighborhood shortly after the killing caused the university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to lock down for almost four hours.
Qi was listed on the university’s website as a student of the victim Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the department of applied physical sciences who was found dead in a chemistry laboratory.
A number of rambling messages posted to an X account, formerly Twitter, in the name of the accused killer in recent months suggest Qi, a graduate of China’s University of Wuhan before moving to the US, felt bullied at the university, was stressed by working long hours, and was troubled by a relationship with a woman he insulted as an “angelic bitch”.
“To have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why and even the how, and also helps us to uncover a motive and really just why this happened today,” the UNC police chief, Brian James, said at a news conference late on Monday.
“Why today? Why at all? And we want to learn from this incident and we will certainly work to do our best to ensure that this never happens again on the UNC campus.”
James said the gun used by the shooter had not been recovered, and it was unknown if it was obtained legally.
“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” the UNC chancellor, Kevin Guskiewicz, said at the news conference.
Yan, the victim, had worked with the Chapel Hill faculty since 2019, the university said. He earned his PhD in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and previously worked as an assistant professor in that state’s Clarkson University.
Students spoke of being scared during the lockdown, and frustrated that the shelter in place order was not lifted until 4.15pm Monday, about an hour and a quarter after Qi’s arrest.
James explained the delay was necessary to ensure they had the correct suspect in custody and that the campus was secure.
Clayton Ulm, 23, a graduate student, said he was in a class of about 50 to 70 people when they were told to go into lockdown. He said an alarm warning of an active shooter sounded, and screens in the classroom lit up with the lockdown order.
“There was quite a bit of panic as students were trying to figure out what to do,” Ulm said in a message to the Associated Press from his classroom, where he said he had been for three hours.
“Then we all started hiding beneath our chairs and under desks. Some students went and locked the doors.”
Recent messages on Qi’s X account suggest he had a fractious relationship with a person he described as his PI, a college acronym for a principal investigator, usually a faculty member responsible for the administration and training for certain projects.
It is not known if the victim was Qi’s PI, but the accused killer was a member of Yan’s research group since last year, according to university officials.
In one message posted in October 2022, Qi appears to accuse fellow students of branding him as “lazy” and of telling tales about him to his PI.
“Both the group of people to say I am lazy and that to prove me working hard instead of telling me that are trying to consume my privacy,” he wrote. “I judge their motivation is only to tell my PI then control me by taletelling.”
In another, he wrote: “Bully in America seems to be a problem. It often comes with people not stopping them at the first time.”
A third post, dated 12 June, refers to a woman he says tried to “beg others to ‘help’ me”, with the consequence of people “looking down” on him. “Angelic bitch,” Qi wrote.
And in a message dated 31 July this year, he said he was a second-year PhD student who “would like to make some new friends”.
Investigators on Tuesday booked Qi with a count of first-degree murder and possession of a weapon on educational property.
In North Carolina, first-degree murder is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.
Classes at UNC Chapel Hill – a facility with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students – were canceled on Tuesday, with all non-mandatory operations also suspended.
The university said in a statement that mental counseling was available for all students, faculty and staff.
Associated Press contributed to this report
