Former MIT student pleads guilty to 2021 murder of Yale student

A former MIT graduate student has pleaded guilty to killing a Yale graduate student in January 2021 in a horrific shooting that shocked people on both college campuses.

The defendant, Qinxuan Pan, 32, narrowly escaped capture just minutes after the killing. He spent the next three months hiding from law enforcement, and the next two years he maintained his innocence. That changed Thursday, when Mr. Pan pleaded guilty, potentially ending a case that had led some Connecticut residents to question the competence of local police.

Mr. Pan faces a single charge of murder, according to a rack by New Haven District Attorney John P. Doyle Jr. As part of his plea deal, Mr. Pan faces up to 35 years in prison. He will be sentenced on April 25.

The Public Prosecution Service did not mention Mr. Pan’s possible motives for the attack. In a 96-page warrant filed in state court in February 2021, a New Haven police detective described Mr. Pan’s actions as follows:

In 2019, while a doctoral student in MIT’s electrical engineering and computer science department, Mr. Pan met Zion Perry, a student at MIT, and they became friends. The two stayed in touch via Facebook, where Ms. Perry posted an announcement on Jan. 30, 2021, celebrating her engagement to Kevin Jiang, a 26-year-old environmental science graduate student at Yale.

A week later, on Feb. 6, 2021, Mr. Pan allegedly stole a dark blue SUV from a dealership in Massachusetts, according to a criminal complaint filed by police in Mansfield, outside Boston. He drove to Ms. Perry’s neighborhood in New Haven, near the Yale campus, where she was getting her doctorate in biochemistry and biophysics.

Mr. Jiang and Ms. Perry had spent much of the day together. They went ice fishing and cooked dinner in her apartment. He left a few minutes after 8 p.m. and got into his Toyota Prius. He had only driven a few blocks before Mr. Pan rammed him with the stolen SUV, according to the warrant. Mr. Jiang got out of his car and Mr. Pan fired eight bullets at him, including several shots to his face.

A surveillance camera captured the crash. A neighbor witnessed the shooting and several people saw the shooter get back into his SUV and drive away, according to police.

About 30 minutes after the shooting, police in the nearby town of North Haven received a call from a local scrap yard, where a driver had left his SUV stuck on a railroad track. Police officers found Mr. Pan behind the wheel of the dark blue GMC. He was wearing a gray knit hat printed with the “MetroPCS” logo, the detective noted.

Mr. Pan told officers he had gotten lost looking for the highway back to Massachusetts. The officers discovered that the vehicle’s license plate had been reported as lost or stolen. In a statement to The New Haven Independent, a local news website, North Haven Police Chief Kevin Glenn said officers were unaware at the time that the vehicle had been stolen.

The officers did not take Mr. Pan into custody. Instead, they arranged for a tow truck, which removed the SUV from the tracks and took Mr. Pan to a nearby motel.

Ninety minutes later, New Haven police issued an alert for a dark-colored SUV. In the alert, a dispatcher incorrectly said the vehicle was possibly driven by two people, possibly including a black man. None of the witnesses to the shooting had reported a second attacker, and none had described the shooter as black, according to the warrant.

The next morning, the same police officer who discovered Mr. Pan stranded at the scrap yard was called to an Arby’s restaurant next to the motel, according to the warrant. An employee had called because a bag had been discovered in the restaurant’s dumpster. It contained items including a semi-automatic Ruger pistol, seven firearm magazines and several boxes of ammunition.

Also in the bag was a gray knitted hat with the “MetroPCS” logo. Police applied for an arrest warrant for Mr Pan on February 26, 2021.

A multi-state manhunt ensued. Eventually, Mr. Pan was tracked to Alabama, where he had rented an apartment under an assumed name. After a three-month search, he was arrested in Alabama and extradited to Connecticut, Doyle said Thursday.

During Mr. Pan’s long flight, some New Haven area residents accused the police of botching the case, according to The New Haven Independent. The fact that Mr. Pan was discovered stuck on the tracks should have prompted officers to ask more questions, some residents said.

In a statement to The Independent, Chief Glenn said: “The officers involved in this investigation did their job properly.”