BLACKSBURG, Va. — A 22-year-old graduate student who had arrived on campus at Virginia Tech just two weeks ago was decapitated with what university officials said appeared to be a kitchen knife at a cafe on campus Wednesday night.
Officials on Thursday said they waited to release the grisly details of her murder until they could contact a translator and notify her mother in China.
“It was quite gruesome,” said Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker, describing the scene. “We felt that it was important for us to do next-of-kin notification before we released that fact.”
Xin Yang, 22, a graduate student from Beijing, had arrived on campus Jan. 8 to begin studying accounting in the Pamplin College of Business, officials said.
Yang, a resident of the Graduate Life Center, was killed at the Au Bon Pain restaurant on the center’s first floor about 7 p.m. Wednesday. Another graduate student, Haiyang Zhu, 25, from Ningbo, China, has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond at the Montgomery County jail.
Hincker said police were still investigating whether anyone tried to intervene and how long the attack lasted.
Officials said Zhu had been a graduate student at Tech since the fall. He was a doctoral student studying agricultural and applied economics. Officials said that the two clearly knew each other. Records indicate that Yang listed both her mother and Zhu as her emergency contacts.
Police are investigating the nature of their relationship, Hincker said.
Police are interviewing witnesses who said they saw the two at Au Bon Pain and saw no sign of argument before Zhu attacked Yang.
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