Zhuang Menghan of CalArts latest on list of Chinese students murdered in the US

Zhuang Menghan, a student from China, was found dead by her roommate in their shared California flat on February 4. Authorities said Zhuang suffered from several “injuries to her upper body”. Her death has prompted heated discussion about the safety of Chinese students and researchers in the United States, as they face growing hostility and discrimination due to tensions between the two countries. Zhuang, 23, was an undergraduate in her fourth year at the California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts. She lived some 8km (5 miles) from the campus, according to local police. Detectives believe Zhuang was murdered by a man she knew, whom she let into her flat the previous evening. “The investigators have a video of the same male exiting Zhuang’s apartment through her second-story bedroom window on the afternoon of the day she was discovered,” an officer from the homicide bureau of the Los Angeles county sheriff’s office said yesterday. Homicide Bureau Detectives are asking for the public's assistance in identifying a person of interest. This individual is a male who was seen entering the victim's apartment the night before and later seen leaving through her second-story bedroom window on the afternoon she was… pic.twitter.com/r9lYWALjn9 — LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) February 13, 2025 The homicide bureau’s Lieutenant Michael Modica posted on X a video of himself before a signboard with photos of the “person of interest whom we want to identify and locate”. Modica described Zhuang’s death as a “senseless and violent act.” “Based on this investigation, it is clear that this was not a random act of violence, and Menghan somehow knew the person of interest,” Modica added. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger has filed a motion offering a US$20,000 reward for information related to the case. The motion states that the “unknown man”, believed to be in his 20s, “appears to be of Asian descent”. In a notice issued on Wednesday, the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles urged US authorities to speed up their investigations and bring the perpetrators to justice as soon as possible. The consulate said it was also maintaining close contact with family members of Zhuang – who also went by the name Emily King – and was coordinating with CalArts authorities to provide active help. In a statement on Wednesday, CalArts said: “Emily was an undergraduate in her fourth year at CalArts and a valued member of our community. Our community is devastated by this loss, and our heartfelt condolences go out to her family, friends, classmates, and teachers.” Zhuang’s father and sister arrived in the US on Wednesday with help from the Chinese consulate, and were expected to meet CalArts officials to collect her things. News of Zhuang’s death spread fast on Chinese social media, with users criticising community safety in the US as several topics about the case trended online on Thursday. Nearly 277,000 Chinese nationals were studying at American institutions during the 2023-24 academic year, according to US data, accounting for nearly a quarter of all international students in the country. Zhuang is the latest Chinese student to be murdered in the US in recent years. Here are some cases that have drawn the most public attention. Dennis Zheng Shaoxiong (2021) Zheng, 24, was shot and killed during a robbery in Chicago’s Hyde Park on November 9, 2021. Days later, 18-year-old suspect Alton Spann was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery, and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon. Zheng was standing on a pavement in the Hyde Park neighbourhood when Spann shot him in the torso and ran off with some of his belongings. He was the second University of Chicago international student killed in 2021, some 10 months after postgraduate student Fan Yiran was gunned down close to where Zheng was shot. A week after Zheng’s death, around 200 students, many from the university’s international Chinese cohort, held an emotional rally on campus, shouting demands into a megaphone and arguing with each other over solutions. Qin Gang, former Chinese foreign minister and ambassador to the US at the time, mourned Zheng on social media. “We call for justice in his case and protection of Chinese in the US from hatred and xenophobia,” Qin posted, while expressing shock and disappointment. Fan Yiran (2021) Fan, a 30-year-old PhD student at the University of Chicago, was the first victim in a series of shootings on January 9, 2021, that left two others dead. Fan was sitting in his vehicle in a multi-storey car park when he was shot in the head. Suspected assailant Jason Nightengale, 32, who was himself killed in a shoot-out with police, apparently chose his victims at random. He had posted nonsensical and expletive-laced videos in the days and hours leading up to the attacks. Authorities did not release many details about the Chicago man whose social media page listed work as a janitor, security guard and forklift operator over the years. The University of Chicago said that the university community remembered Fan as “an exceptional student, talented scholar, and beloved friend”. At the graduation ceremony that June, Fan was awarded a posthumous PhD. Guo ChenWei (2017) Guo, 23, a student of computer science at the University of Utah, was shot and killed in Salt Lake City on October 30, 2017. Guo, who was parked near Red Butte Canyon near the university campus, is believed to have been the victim of a failed carjacking. A 24-year-old suspect, Austin Boutain, was arrested at the downtown Salt Lake City Library the following day. Boutain pleaded guilty to aggravated murder as well as attempted aggravated murder and aggravated kidnapping, for trying to lure a woman who was with Guo further into the canyon to kill her and then shooting at her as she fled. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2018. The University of Utah paid US$500,000 to the families of the two victims for failing to warn them of campus security risks. Zhang Yingying (2017) Zhang, 26, a visiting Chinese student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was kidnapped, raped and murdered on June 9, 2017. On June 30, investigators arrested and charged Brendt Allen Christensen, 27, a local resident and former physics graduate student at the university, with kidnapping Zhang. In 2019, Christensen was convicted of one count of kidnapping resulting in death, and two counts of lying to investigators. But the jury was deadlocked on whether to impose the death penalty, and he was sentenced to life in prison in July that year. Investigators said Christensen, who aspired to be a serial killer, posed as a police officer to lure Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus after she missed her ride. He then took her to his flat where he raped and beat her to death. Her remains have never been found. Additional reporting by Khushboo Razdan in Washington

Zhuang Menghan of CalArts latest on list of Chinese students murdered in the US

23-year-old found dead at her California home with several upper-body injuries is believed to have been killed by a man she knew