The remains sought by Yingying Zhang's family for proper burial, and whose whereabouts the killer had kept from them, may be "impossible" to retrieve By Jeff Truesdell Published on August 8, 2019 . She played in a band and had ambitions of becoming a professor in China. Her phone was disabled moments later. She was a brilliant scholar and had won numerous laurels in China before coming to the US in April 2017, where she was supposed to stay for a year. They also found evidence of a part of the car being cleaned extra thoroughly, which hinted towards Brendt hiding something. The chest infection was so severe that her heart did not respond to CPR during surgery. She was No. ABC reports that Bullis testified that she Christensen seemed excited and proud when he discussed killing Zhang. A large media contingent awaiting the start of the Yingying Zhang news conference at @Beckett6Steve's office in Urbana. Yingying is an incredible young lady. There was a trial, but it was more about whether he would get the death penalty (he didnt; he got a life sentence), than it was about guilt or innocence. She is gone. Zhang's father said if his daughter's remains are ever found, her family plans to take her body back to China. Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, said if the information Christensen gave prosecutors is true "it further confirms that he is a heartless and evil person.". Several lamented that while foreigners in China are showered with privileges, Chinese people overseas endure second-class status. One student who had Christensen as a TA wrote on Reddit, I had him 3 years ago for physics 212 TA. Yingying Zhang (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Zhng Yngyng) (December 21, 1990 - June 9, 2017) was born in the city of Nanping, Fujian Province, to Ronggao Zhang and Lifeng Ye.Zhang has one younger brother, Zhengyang. 1 hospitalized after fire in West Town, CFD says, Jupiter and Venus appear to 'kiss' in the sky, Belvidere Jeep assembly plant shut down indefinitely. Yingying is on stage with her band. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get day-to-day video coverage of what's going on in China and beyond!Three years have passed since the kidnapping and mur. Missing Since 06/09/2017. Yangyang Cheng is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law Schools Paul Tsai China Center and a particle physicist. The defense attorneys opening statement shocked everyone in the courtroom. It creates and reinforces a binary: us versus them, good versus evil, the deserving versus the unwanted. Since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic caused by a new beta . Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang's remains. Co-Authors. With the defense already admitting that Brendt killed Zhang, the jury did not take long to find him guilty of the crime. Powered by. Bottom: Brendt Christensen (Courtesy Macon . In August 2019, Zhangs family was notified of the potential site of Zhangs remains by the prosecutors. ID found on disambiguation page, needs clean-up. Listeria monocytogenes is the causative agent of listeriosis, a bacterial infection that can cause severe illness, including septicaemia via blood infection, meningitis and encephalitis in the brain, and perinatal infection or abortion via . University of Illinois PoliceYingying Zhang. I also recommend this Washington Post article, which links to a partial transcript of the trial. This greatly alarmed counselors, but they later deduced that he was not in immediate need of hospitalization. Prosecutor Eugene Miller alleged that Zhangs blood was found on a bat that Christensen used to strike Zhang, as well as in other places in his apartment, according to WTTW-TV. During a follow-up investigation, authorities determined that the contents of Christensens dumpster were picked up on July 12, 2017, compacted at least twice, and taken to a private landfill near Danville, Illinois, the statement said. A prosecutor told the court on July 5, 2017, that Christensen was recorded at a rally for Zhang by authorities and explained the characteristics of his ideal victim and, according to CNN, pointed out those in the crowd who matched them at a vigil he attended for the missing woman. The person helping authorities record Christensen was his then-girlfriend Terra Bullis. Brendt Christensen, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in Yingying Zhangs murder, said he put her body in three separate trash bags and threw them in a dumpster. To lure female victims into his car, Christensen claimed to be a police officer. Yingying Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, reads a statement in Chinese outside the federal courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, on Monday, June 24, 2019, moments after a 12-person jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her kidnapping and death. Share; . / CBS Chicago. So let me just say here at the outset, it will be startling for many of you to hear Brendt Christensen killed Yingying.. The music starts and a dam breaks in me. A new documentary, Finding Yingying, premiered at film festivals last year to critical acclaim and is now available on streaming platforms. There were also statements from Christensen's wife at the time of the investigation in the newly unsealed records. (. The documentary ' Finding Yingying ,' chronicles the disappearance of Zhang and bringing her justice while capturing the devastating impact on her . The political catastrophes in the first half of the 20th century brought a new urgency and understanding to human rights and the necessity of constraining state power. That evening, unable to reach her, Yingyings Chinese colleagues reported her missing to the police. Yingying Zhang Zhang; Zhonghua Gao (Contributorpp. The I-Team has also learned that soon after Christensen's arrest, he wrote a letter saying he wanted to end his life. In the documentary "Finding Yingying," which is now playing in virtual theaters, director Jiayan "Jenny" Shi turns the attention to Ms. Zhang and her family. Explore Scholarly Publications and Datasets in the NSF-PAR. She is singing a song about youth, where time is all future, brimming with possibilities. Yingying Zhangs remains were never found. Police continue search for missing person, We are releasing this video as we continue our search for Yingying Zhang, missing since Friday, June 9. Christensen, a 30-year-old former doctoral student at the university, was arrested later that month and charged with her kidnapping and murder. Its on the T-shirt Yingying wore in a photo shortly after arriving in the U.S. And thus, even though they said that the FBI is probably looking into it, they did state that it would be quite challenging a process. I watched it again this spring, when haunting images from the mass shooting in Atlanta were still in the news, and every day seemed to bring fresh reports of harassment or assault against people who look like me. That I had emerged unscathed made everything seem surreal. Students grouped together to find her, while the FBI was brought on to help the local police department. Brendt Christensen, 30, kidnapped, tortured and killed U of I scholar Yingying Zhang in 2018. On June 29, 2017, while Christensen was under law enforcement surveillance, agents overheard him explaining that he kidnapped Zhang. In a flurry of anguished messages, she told me to stop wearing high-heels so I could run faster in case of danger. The driver, to his credit, took me to my friends place. Thus, Zhangs family continues to mourn Zhangs death without even the smallest comfort of being able to lay her body to rest. The following month, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Ph.D. student at Unversity of Minnesota, Twin Cities. By defending features in the U.S. judicial process, I was in fact defending the life I had worked so hard to achieve. This detail is particularly heartbreaking as members of law enforcement are frequent perpetrators of sexual violence, especially toward women of color, but are rarely held accountable. Beyond the immediacy of war, when is a state justified to kill? Deceased/Not Found IL - Yingying Zhang, 26, Urbana, 9 June 2017 #11 *GUILTY* Thread starter liltexans; Start date Jul 2, 2017; . Thats because Christensens attorney said during an opening statement that Christensen had killed Zhang, but disputed some of the evidence against him. Brendt Christensen, a former graduate student, has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. The song is Avril Lavignes Complicated. If I look back on the early aughts, when life revolved around school and heartbreak was about boys, Avrils voice will accompany those reels of memory. As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Christensen worked briefly on the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds largest particle physics experiment where I spent over a decade of my career. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Two ABC news teams tell the tale of two families, tragically connected by the 2017 murder of U of I scholar Yingying Zhang. On the right, a strapped gurney. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. Yingying Zhang. Christensen is serving a life prison term. I was too heavy! I joke with my friends. However, he soon broke down and told authorities that he had picked up an Asian girl, but she was not in his car for a long time. Calls to her cell phone went unanswered. The suspect, Brendt Christensen, pleaded not guilty and refused to give up information. On June 9, 2017, the day Zhang went missing, she was supposed to meet a leasing agent to sign for a new apartment where she planned to stay. Zhang's body has not been found. Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. After nine days of trial and less than two hours of deliberations, the jury found Christensen guilty. Yingying never made it to the leasing office. The zonules may directly participate in the formation of cataract via the immune mechanism. In 2013, Zhang graduated from Sun Yat-sen University at . Less than 10 percent of murders and 20 percent of rapes are committed by strangers. In the just-unsealed documents was the story of a woman who claimed Christensen choked and sexually assaulted her sometime in 2012 or 2013. At 1:39 p.m., she sent a text message from her cell phone to a manager of a different apartment complex in Urbana, Illinois, where she intended to sign a lease. 2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. But I also knew the real point of tension between us in relation to this case had nothing to do with criminal procedure. The same jury who convicted him later split on the death penalty. Cameras show her getting into a black car and authorities identified Brendt Christensen as the suspect. Cultural difference makes for a convenient excuse to validate the self and exoticize the other. Zhang's body has never been found. A jury convicted Christensen of all charges in her death after 90 minutes of deliberation in June. CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team on Friday obtained never-before-heard information in case of murdered University of Illinois Chinese scholar Ying Ying Zhang. By 9:24 p.m., an associate professor reported that Zhang was missing. The drive from the airport is the longest distance in the world. Yingying Zhang was born on December 21, 1990 in China. By this time, Zhangs family flew in from China and helped in the search. Former US doctoral student Brendt Christensen, 29, has been found guilty of the violent abduction and slaying of Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang in 2017. A bilingual memorial service for Zhang will be held on Friday in Savoy, Illinois. Every person deserves safety, but when does justice bleed into vengeance, and how may our desires for protection embolden the systems that harm us? He told authorities that he was at home around the time in question. Like every other institution in this country, the evolution of the death penalty in the U.S. is intertwined with slavery and codified with racism. Yingying was still missing. If someone is deemed prone to violence as a free man, then hes likely to become more so in prison, where violence is the norm. Its clear from an affidavit in the case that authorities thought they had their man, but they needed more evidence to seek an arrest, especially because they did not know where Zhangs body was. She called the FBI after seeing Christensen's picture on television when he was arrested in June 2017. October 1, 2021, 7:30am. 1007/S11426-021 . That summer was a particularly low point in my strained relationship with my mother, and I had turned to social media for validation of my moral superiority. According to this unsealed motion, he was placed on suicide watch and isolated from the general population for several months. Like her, I had grown up in a provincial city in China and clung to academic excellence as the only way out. Attorney Steve Beckett, who represents Zhangs family, said last week that defense lawyers provided the information about Zhangs remains as part of an immunity agreement in November 2018, telling prosecutors that Zhangs body was likely in a landfill in Vermilion County in Illinois. As per Zhangs family lawyers statements, the contents of the dumpster were taken to Danville, where it was compacted twice. The fund had already amassed more than $30,000 by Wednesday morning. Joined Aug 8, 2019 Messages 18 Reaction score 210. In fact, the details of how Zhang died, which came out during trial, were awful. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Christensen lured Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus posing as a police officer with the . I argued that its safer for me because Im tall. She was 26. Verified email at umn.edu. An officer met with the professor and other colleagues of Zhang, who said they had not been able to contact her for several hours. Penculikan dan pembunuhan Yingying Zhang terjadi di Urbana, Illinois, Amerika Serikat pada tanggal 9 Juni 2017 ketika Zhang, seorang sarjana tamu di Universitas Illinois Urbana-Champaign, diculik oleh Brendt Allen Christensen, seorang warga kota Champaign dan alumni jurusan fisika di universitas yang sama. Yingying Zhang; Liangtao Li; Jiarui Guo; Yang Zhang; Xufeng Niu; Yang Wang ; Liang Hu et al. Friends offered up advice in the comments below. "There is nothing in the world that we want more than to find our daughter and bring her home. Ms Zhang's parents and . Brendt Christensen has been convicted of the murder of 26-year-old doctoral student Yingying Zhang, whose body has never been found. I could not move, could barely see or speak, but I was lucid. The answer is no. Ying Ying Zhang, Her Name Means "A Twinkle Of Light," But Her Light Was Taken Away; who Was Yingying Zhang? I pretended that our discussion was an academic exercise because I could not bear the thought that in the fragile mind of my mother, who had raised me as a young widow, Yingying was me and I was her. Was her body ever found? Given the size of the landfill, the amount of time that has passed, and the amount of additional garbage since dumped in the landfill, Beckett said any attempt to find the body would be very costly. Send it to The Daily Beasthere. Main text. "There is nothing in the world that we want more than to find our daughter and bring . Video showed her at an Urbana, Illinois, bus stop getting into a black Saturn vehicle, and, after that, she vanished without a trace. Hes also accused of stabbing and choking her and comparing himself to Ted Bundy. When the police searched his car, nothing stood out of the ordinary at first glance. The FBI placed Christensen under surveillance and monitored his conversations. . Yingying Zhang, 26, a visiting scholar doing research at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, went missing on June 9, 2017 in Champaign, and her body was never found . The answer is no. (2021 Rerelease) 02.01. . Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) exhibits the characteristics of strong metastatic ability and a high recurrence rate, and M2-type macrophages play an important role in this process. Referenced Authors. The memorial garden for Yingying Zhang outside Campbell Hall on the UIUC campus, near where she was last seen. The remains of Yingying Zhang, a Chinese scholar at University of Illinois who was murdered in 2017, could be in a landfill in central Illinois, according to multiple reports, though her body has still not been found, authorities say. Yet historically, the Middle Kingdom was not any more punitive than its Western counterparts, and recent surveys show a two-thirds support rate for the death penalty in China, roughly the same as those from the U.S. over the same time period. Japan Web Proxy Server*****Jiang Yuzhou was silent for a moment before saying: "You are still young, I can understand that you don't want to be bound by marriage early, but I think we are very suitable, if you want, we can not talk about marriage and talk about a relationship like other couples, you don't have to Just find someone to deal with."In his opinion, Gu Nai suddenly had a boyfriend . . . Ph.D., 2016, Xiamen University. And thus, even though they said that the FBI is probably looking into it, they did state that it would be quite challenging a process. Yingyings body has never been found. It's June 12, 2019, two years and three days after Yingying went missing, the first day of the jury trial in the United States v. Brendt Christensen. Brendt Christensen is a former Ph.D. student researcher from Champaign who was convicted by a federal jury of kidnapping in the death of Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old University of Illinois visiting scholar from China. As per Zhangs family lawyers statements, the contents of the dumpster were taken to Danville, where it was compacted twice. Brendt claimed that he had dropped the girl off at a place that looked like a residential area, but could not pinpoint the exact location providing further cause for doubt. Yingying majored in environmental engineering. During the trial, several people, including Terra Bullis, testified against Brendt. Yingyings life was precious. The image was used in the missing person bulletin by the police and the FBI. Y Zhang, X Qian, Z Peng, N Yang. Her accusations were never presented to the jury. Tragically, and . Investigators believe Zhang is dead . Speaking through an interpreter at Christensen's sentencing, Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, appealed to him to reveal where her body is so that the family can take her remains back to China. She was supposed to check out an apartment to lease and never showed up. Her body has never been found. The menacing images appear to come alive, two monsters manifesting the paucity of our moral imagination. Four days after the news broke, a post went viral on Chinese social media, If the Yingying Zhang case took place in China, with attention from the entire country, whats the probability that it would be solved within 48 hours?. Zhang went missing on June 9, 2017, as she was headed to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment in Urbana. First published on August 7, 2019 / 6:12 PM. Most sexual assaults are never reported and fewer than three percent lead to a conviction. For the closing statement at the penalty phase of the trial, Christensens defense presented a 72-page powerpoint on why his life should be spared. Yingying's body has never been found. Nanoscale thermal transport. Associate Professor, Tsinghua University - Cited by 8,825 - Nanomaterials - Nanochemistry - Carbon nanotubes Yingyings grandfather is sitting next to him. That alleged admission built on previous statements that Christensen made to the FBI in which he allegedly confessed that Zhang had been in his car, although he claimed she left it voluntarily, the affidavit says. Zhang's father said if his daughter's remains are ever found, her family plans to take her body back to China. Red with rage, the old man exclaims: If the U.S. does not address this case properly, well kill one or two American students in China.. Her body never found, the family still hoping to someday bring her . Small 2022 . Reactions: ShHolmz, altojack, MajorHoople and 8 others. 2021. I go back to the video and let the clock rewind. The Chinese government keeps the total number of executions per year classified. To be a Chinese student or scholar in the U.S. is to chart a lonely existence. If you are interested to know more about this specific case and where Zhangs killer is now, we have got you covered. To date, Yingying Zhang's remains have never been found. Even as the family of Yingying Zhang acknowledges the near impossibility of her remains ever being found, . Born 12/21/1990, she grew up in the Jianyang District, Nanping City, Fujian Province, China. Worked so hard to achieve associate professor, Tsinghua University - Cited 8,825. And less than 10 percent of rapes are committed by strangers family lawyers statements, the jury Christensen! Was headed to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment in Urbana in prison without parole Im.... 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