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▲UNC Graduate student Tailei Qi makes his first appearance at the Orange County Courthouse on Tuesday, Aug. 29 2023.The suspect in the fatal shooting of a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday is a graduate student at the school, UNC police said in a news release Tuesday.Tailei Qi, the graduate student, was charged with first-degree murder and having a gun on education property in court Tuesday. He did not enter a plea and was held without bond. The victim was identified as Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences who had worked for UNC since 2019.The two knew each other, UNC Police Chief Brian James said Tuesday.Qi was a grad student in the same department and Yan was his faculty adviser, according to Qi’s UNC biographical page, which has been deleted but is available on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. According to the page, Qi entered the school in 2022 and listed his previous education as at Louisiana State University and Wuhan University.Qi entered the courtroom Tuesday wearing an orange jail outfit with his hands cuffed in front of him. He used an interpreter and was assigned a public defender for his first appearance. He is a citizen of China and is in the United States on a visa, District Attorney Jeff Nieman said.Nieman said the gun possession charge was related to a 9 mm handgun. The firearm used in the shooting still has not been recovered, James said.If convicted, Qi faces a minimum of life in prison without parole for the murder charge and up to two years for the weapons charge. The maximum sentence for first-degree murder in North Carolina is the death penalty, but Nieman has said his office policy is not seeking the death penalty.UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz expressed his condolences to Yan’s family and said the campus will ring the bell tower in his honor on Wednesday.“He was a beloved colleague, mentor and a friend to so many on our campus, and a father to two young children,” he said.The early afternoon shooting at the school’s Caudill Laboratories, a chemistry studies building, sent the university into lockdown for hours.The suspect was located on foot about a mile away and detained about 90 minutes afterward, James said. His car was found on campus, he said.“We want to ensure that we gather every piece of evidence to determine exactly what happened here today and why it happened,” James said at a news conference Monday evening. “It is too early in this investigation to know a motive for the shooting.”Classes and campus activities were canceled Monday and Tuesday, and will continue to be closed Wednesday, officials said. This is the second week of fall semester classes at the flagship university of the 17-member UNC system.
“This loss is devastating and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community. We will work to rebuild that sense of trust and safety within our community,” Guskiewicz said on Monday.The FBI is assisting in evidence gathering, officials said.Add Wechat FLA5555 to ask to join the international students' wechat group.
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