The investigators said that even with the information provided by Christensen, the recovery of Zhangs body will be tough. The moment the page loaded, I looked away. He told authorities that he was at home around the time in question. Sex Female. On June 15, 2017, Christensen was interviewed at the FBIs Champaign office. . They dont. Share; . 3.2.Expression profiles of HMGB1, and TLR4 signaling molecules during APAP-induced liver injury. Lifeng Ye, mother of slain University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband, Ronggao Zhang, left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty . Yingying Zhang was known as a compassionate, talented, joyous, and intelligent woman. Shes gone forever. The fund had already amassed more than $30,000 by Wednesday morning. Most sexual assaults are never reported and fewer than three percent lead to a conviction. I too came to the U.S. for my Ph.D., and studied at the University of Chicago, a two-hour drive from UIUC, where many of my colleagues and friends work. But the Zhang family understands that the authorities are still considering an attempt to locate and recover Yingyings remains.. Eager to clear her boyfriends name, Bullis agreed to wear a wire for the FBI and accompany her boyfriend on a memorial walk for Zhang. On June 12, 2017, they went to the 2500 block of W. Springfield Ave. in Champaign and saw the car registered to Christensen. Can we find that guys mother? she asks. From Yangtze to Mars: The Fiery History of Chinas Space Program, The US Is Building Walls Around Science, and Were All Poorer for It. Her body never found, the family still hoping to someday bring her . Steve Beckett, Zhangs family lawyer, Yingyings father, Ronggao ZhangIf, upon hearing this, later, In addition to this, a memorial stone with Zhangs name was placed on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The defense attorneys opening statement shocked everyone in the courtroom. It doesnt reveal whom Christensen was allegedly speaking with at the time. And me, myself will never agree with that. He pauses after every few words and presses his lips, as if to hold back the flame rising through him. In the previous study, we revealed that SMA/CORM2, through releasing CO induced macrophage reprogramming toward M2 polarization fulfills the anti-inflammatory effect and promotes liver regeneration (Song et al., 2021).However, besides the macrophage-mediated inflammatory process, other inflammation . In one recording, Christensen is accused of saying that Zhang fought him, and that he took her back to his apartment and held her there against her will last month, CNN reported. Reactions: ShHolmz, altojack, MajorHoople and 8 others. In England and colonial America, as legal historian Stuart Banner writes, the death penalty circa 1700 was the equivalent of prison todaythe standard punishment for a wide range of serious crimes including arson, theft, and counterfeiting. "Due to the compaction process, Yingying's bodily remains may be very, very small in size," Beckett said. Former US doctoral student Brendt Christensen, 29, has been found guilty of the violent abduction and slaying of Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang in 2017. . All Rights Reserved. 1007/S11426-021 . 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. Later, in the other interview, authorities extracted an admission from Christensen that Zhang had been in his car, prompting the surveillance, according to the affidavit. 10: 2021: The Vacancy Effect on Thermal Interface Resistance between Aluminum and Silicon by Molecular Dynamics. Jul 2021; Xu Junhao; Yingying Zhang . The I-Team has also learned that soon after Christensen's arrest, he wrote a letter saying he wanted to end his life. According to News Gazette, she testified that Christensen typed the following, showed it to her, and then deleted it: It was me. He was convicted two years later. Ms Zhang's parents and . Christensen lured Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus posing as a police officer with the . August 7, 2019 / 6:12 PM There, a young woman in a black dress and boots is shredding her voice to the beat. This study showed . When Yingying Zhang went missing on June 9, 2017, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was thrown into chaos as people searched frantically for the visiting Chinese scholar. Completely normal, perhaps a bit awkward but with no unusual vibes.. On the left is a grim, gray facility with barbed wires and a watch tower. The family also said they are working with the University of Illinois to create a gravesite in her memory. The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month in the killing of Yingying Zhang. After her education, she planned on marrying her fianc and eventually returning to China to become a teacher. With trucks taking their loads to landfills across the city, authorities figured that her remains might have been spread around several landfills by the time Brendt was convicted. They have since divorced. 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. She was the first in her family to graduate from college in 2013 and to go on to finish a master's degree in 2016 in the field of agricultural sciences at . In 2013, Zhang graduated from Sun Yat-sen University at . WTTW-TVs Matt Masterson also reported on Wednesday that Christensen has not and will not file an appeal to his convictions. It was invaluable. Yingyings body has never been found. Because a unanimous verdict was not reached, Christensen was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A memorial stone engraved with Yingying Zhang's name in both English and Chinese on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in June 2019, two years after her disappearance. 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 felt fine the next morning, as if it were all just a dream. Her death was not random. My mind had filled in the rest of the plot. Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. However, theres no doubt, sadly, that Zhang is dead. In June 2017, Yingying Zhang, a young scholar from China went missing from a bus stop near the University of Illinois.The entire encounter was caught on nearby surveillance cameras. However, just three minutes later, the car returned, and Zhang was seen getting into it. "The Zhang family reports this as information they have received and cannot vouch for its truth," he said in a statement. Christensen allegedly claimed that he believed he made a wrong turn because the female became panicked. He initially claimed that he then let the female out of the vehicle in a residential area a few blocks away from where he picked her up. The issues of racism, misogyny, and mental health crises in the sciences and in graduate school did not start with Christensen and have not vanished with his incarceration. . If even one juror opposed, then the life sentence was applied. To date, no search has been undertaken. The strange and twisted life of Brendt Christensen: claims to have killed over 12 people already, vows Yingying Zhang's body will never be found (June, 2019) . Both the darkness and the light are part of what makes us human. Revisiting Yingyings story at this moment is not only relevant, but also necessary. The judge confirmed that its the former. Now, among the familiar sight and through the familiar sound, I also see Yingying. Brendt Christensen, a former graduate student, has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. Beckett said Christensen's defense attorneys told federal prosecutors what he did with Zhang's body in November 2018, but the information was provided under a grant of immunity, so prosecutors could not disclose the information to anyone until after the trial. Alpha, our German Shepherd dog, left us forever on Feb 28, 2021. Yingying Zhang; Liangtao Li; Jiarui Guo; Yang Zhang; Xufeng Niu; Yang Wang ; Liang Hu et al. My mother forwarded many of these reports to me. Two months after Yingying went missing, her mother and younger brother arrived in the U.S. As seen about halfway through the film, the humble woman from Nanping weeps in the backseat of a car. The driver, to his credit, took me to my friends place. Federal prosecutors have said Christensen posed as an undercover officer to lure Zhang, 26, into his car on June 9, 2017. 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. According to ABC News, Law enforcement believes the bags were then taken to a landfill in Danville, Illinois. But it was too late to recover her body. My mother who lives in China believes that criminal suspects should be tortured till they confess, my 2017 self wrote, that innocent until proven guilty is a frightening flaw of the U.S. justice system., The post concluded with a hashtag, #help., I read the words now and am startled by the casual cruelty. When confirming details about Christensen, I googled his name and clicked on his LinkedIn profile. One of them, a law student, noted that the presumption of innocence is a first principle and a literally foundational American value.. Christensen is still in a downstate jail, awaiting assignment to a federal penitentiary where he will spend the rest of his life. Author pages are created from data sourced from our academic publisher partnerships and public sources. Cops are also more likely to commit domestic abuse than the general population. The attorney argued he had mental health issues and the case was essentially to set up the next phase of the trial, Christensens sentencing. Race Asian. I saw the film for the first time in the fall of 2020, after a summer of protests for Black lives was met with raging police brutality. A grief stricken Lifeng Ye, second from right, the mother of slain University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, is supported by a friend Lin Guiping and Yingying's brother Zhengyang Zhang, right . To be a Chinese student or scholar in the U.S. is to chart a lonely existence. WGN-TV reported that he raped and beheaded Zhang, and implied he had 12 other victims, but this was never proven. Very new to the country, Zhang still hadnt settled down properly when a devastating state of affairs snuffed out her wonderful life. In one of the audio recordings, according to ABC, Christensen described how Zhang fought back, saying, that it was supernatural almost how [Zhang] just didnt give up. He then claimed he attacked Zhang with a baseball bat before decapitating her. "It is evident that any attempt to recover Yingying's remains would be complicated and expensive, would require government oversight and the cooperation of the landfill owners, and would have no certainty of success," he said. Beckett said the defense team for her killer, Brendt Christensen, disclosed the location of Zhang's body as part of a failed immunity agreement. However, calls and texts to Zhangs phone went unanswered, and the worry heightened with time. One of her favorite songs was The Rose, a hit in 1980 for American singer Bette Midler, reported The Chicago Tribune. About. After nine days of trial and less than two hours of deliberations, the jury found Christensen guilty. Christensen's defense attorneys admitted at trial that he killed Zhang, and focused on convincing the jury to spare him from the death penalty. The kidnapping and murder of Yingying Zhang occurred in Urbana, Illinois on June 9, 2017, when Zhang, a visiting Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was abducted by Brendt Allen Christensen, a Champaign resident and former physics graduate student at the university. According to this unsealed motion, he was placed on suicide watch and isolated from the general population for several months. Authorities narrowed their search down to 18 four-door Saturn Astra vehicles registered in Champaign County and interviewed the owners. Yingying Zhang's mother, Lifeng Ye, sobs as her husband addresses the media. After the trial, media asked for access to hundreds of documents sealed during the case. "We condemn his brutal and malicious actions and we hope that he suffers for the rest of his life as he made Yingying suffer in the final moments of her life," he said through an interpreter. The music starts and a dam breaks in me. Its loss can never be repaid. Brendt Christensen has been convicted of the murder of 26-year-old doctoral student Yingying Zhang, whose body has never been found. A woman who testified during the trial said Christensen showed her a silver sheriff's star when he asked her to get into his car. People from the FBI also testified that Zhangs DNA and her blood were found inside Brendts apartment, which unmistakeably linked him to the crime. One student who had Christensen as a TA wrote on Reddit, I had him 3 years ago for physics 212 TA. On June 29, 2017, while Christensen was under law enforcement surveillance, agents overheard him explaining that he kidnapped Zhang. . Tragically, and horrifically, her family has not been given that closure. Cameras show her getting into a black car and authorities identified Brendt Christensen as the suspect. 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. And there's plenty of other news articles about . (. Would UIUC be a safer place if some of its resources for policing and surveillance went toward mental health services and supporting international students? Christensen is not a social, charismatic person, and so is unlikely to recruit others to commit violent acts on his behalf. Five jurors agreed with this point. Yingying Zhang, Clinical Social Work/Therapist, Chicago, IL, 60640, (872) 274-4302, As a first generation immigrant, I recognize the unique experience individuals face in life. Since then, they've likely been covered by at least 30 feet of landfill. A federal jury convicted Christensen in June. 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