Police have identified the graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who allegedly murdered a faculty member on campus yesterday. The suspected shooter is 34-year-old Tailei Qi, who enrolled at UNC in 2022 and was a Ph.D student in the department of Applied Physical Sciences.
Qi is accused of bringing a gun onto campus and fatally shooting associate professor Zijie Yan, according to AP News. He was arrested about an hour and a half after the shooting, and his motive isn't yet known.
From CNN:
The early afternoon shooting sent the university with more than 30,000 students into lockdown for hours. The suspect was detained about 90 minutes after the gunfire interrupted activities at the school's Caudill Laboratories, a chemistry studies building.
"We want to ensure that we gather every piece of evidence to determine exactly what happened here today and why it happened," UNC Police Chief Brian James said at a news conference Monday evening. "It is too early in this investigation to know a motive for the shooting."
Detectives won't get clues into the motive until they speak with the suspect, James said. Investigators have not found the firearm that was used in the shooting and it's not known whether it was legally obtained, James said.
No one else was injured, officials said.
Qi is scheduled to show up in court today at 2:00 p.m.
