Former MIT Researcher Arrested For Murdering Yale Student

On Tuesday, Qinxuan Pan, who has been charged with murder in connection with the death of Kevin Jiang, is scheduled to make an appearance in court. 

After several postponements, the former MIT grad student who is being held on a $20 million bond is scheduled to appear in court this week. He is accused of murdering a fellow grad student at Yale and leading law enforcement agencies on a four-month chase last year. 

Qinxuan Pan, a Chinese national and a longstanding researcher at MIT was arrested for a February 6, 2021, murder charge in New Haven, Connecticut, for the deadly shooting of Kevin Jiang, age 26. 

Per the online docket of the Connecticut Judicial Branch, Pan has a hearing on the accusation of murder slated for this coming Tuesday, more than a year and a half after the horrible homicide.

(Fox News):Ex-#MIT researcher arrested for #Yale student’s murder after months-long manhunt to appear in court : Qinxuan Pan, a former MIT researcher, is scheduled to appear Tuesday on the murder charge in connection to the .. https://t.co/PSqfgMoYFx

— NewsOnePlace.com (@newsoneplace) September 4, 2022

After allowing the defense’s several motions to postpone the case, Judge Gerald Harmon is scheduled to convene a probable cause hearing or press forward on the matter. 

As of yet, Pan has not agreed to plead guilty to the murder accusation, and the circumstances surrounding the homicide are unknown. 

Jiang, a veteran of the United States Army and National Guard who grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Washington before going to Yale for graduate work in environmental studies, was born in China. Family and acquaintances said he was a fervent Christian who had proposed to his fiancé, Zion Perry, the week before he was killed. Perry, a 2020 MIT alumna, was spotted at a school dance with fellow alum Pan in the same year. 

Although Perry announced their engagement to her Facebook friends, no other information about their relationship has been made public. 

Pan is suspected of stealing a GMC Terrain that he took out for a test drive from a dealership in Mansfield, Massachusetts, on the morning of the murder and never returned. Pan’s mother told police that her son had switched his mobile phone number and that they had gone to the house many times before for “mental illness issues,” so they didn’t bother looking for the car when they got to the Malden, Massachusetts, residence. 

Shortly after the alleged shooting of Jiang in adjacent New Haven, Pan reportedly crossed state borders, and the stolen car had to be removed from train tracks in North Haven, Connecticut. Pan was first questioned by police, but he disappeared before they could return to the motel where he was staying to question him again. 

On February 26, 2021, the New Haven State’s Attorney’s Office filed a warrant charging Pan with murder in connection with the death of Jiang. However, the U.S. citizen with a Shanghai birthplace would go missing for months at a time. 

The United States Marshals Service claimed that Pan was sighted in a car with his family near Brookhaven or Duluth, Georgia, on February 11, 2021. On March 1, 2021, however, the Marshals Service announced a “nationwide manhunt” because he was effectively at large. 

Pan was later the subject of a “red notice” from Interpol for murder and big theft. 

On May 14, 2021, he was apprehended at a Birmingham, Alabama, apartment he had rented using a false identity, along with $19,000 in cash, seven cellular phones, seven SIM cards, and his father’s passport. He is a flight risk, the prosecution argues, because of his wealthy family.