A graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has been charged in the fatal shooting of a professor on Monday, the university announced on Tuesday.
Tailei Qi, 34, was charged with first-degree murder and carrying a pistol at an educational institution in the shooting of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in applied physical sciences at the school since 2019.
According to the university’s website, Qi was a Ph.D. student who joined Yan’s research group in January 2022.
It was unclear what triggered the shooting in a college lab on Monday afternoon. Reports of shots fired caused an hours-long lockdown at the school, which has approximately 32,000 students, 4,100 faculty, and 9,000 staff members.
Public schools in the area were likewise closed on the first day of classes following the summer holiday.
The university announced on Tuesday that it has established a hotline for students and faculty who needed to talk about the incident, as well as those who required other counseling services.
“We know that the wounds of this tragedy will not heal quickly”, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz stated in an email to the college community announcing Yan’s death.
He stated that the university would ring the campus bell tower and spend a moment of silence in Yan’s honor on Wednesday afternoon.
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