The graduate student accused of fatally shooting a Univeristy of North Carolina professor on campus Monday will be held in jail without bail, a judge ruled Tuesday, and the district attorney will not seek the death penalty.
Tailei Qi entered the courtroom at the Orange County Courthouse in an orange jail jumpsuit and chains around his wrists and waist. He glanced around the room and looked at the wall of cameras recording the hearing from the far side of the room.
Qi, 34, is accused of first-degree murder in the death of associate professor Zijie Yan, and with possessing a 9 mm pistol on educational property. At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, UNC Police Chief Brian James said the firearm had not yet been recovered. James said police could not say how many shots were fired.
Judge Sherri Murrell agreed to appoint capital defenders to represent Qi, who could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on the murder charge.
The gun charge carries a maximum punishment of two years in prison.
District Attorney Jeff Nieman said an eyewitness led law enforcement officers to Qi in a neighborhood off campus after a 911 caller had reported shots fired inside Caudill Labs on South Road at 1:02 p.m.
The university sounded alarms and issued an Alert Carolina message about an “armed and dangerous person on or near campus, sending the campus into lockdown for three hours.
“This has been the definition of a cooperative investigation,” Nieman said Tuesday, after officials noted Monday night that Chapel Hill police, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, N.C. State Highway Patrol and FBI were all assisting UNC Police in the investigation.
Nieman said he will not seek the death penalty against Qi.
He ran for district attorney two years ago, stating then that he would not seek the death penalty as Orange County prosecutor.
The death penalty is cruel, racist, expensive and is not a deterrent, he wrote then. It is also “the only punishment we can’t undo,” he added.
Although the death penalty still exists in North Carolina, no one has been executed by the state since 2006 due to state law requiring a licensed medical professional to administer lethal injections. Many major medical institutions, including the American Medical Association, deem the practice unethical for physicians to participate in.
As criminal proceedings progress, plea agreements can be reached with the district attorney’s office. In some cases, defendants can avoid a jury trial by pleading guilty to lesser charges.
Police have not divulged a possible motive for the shooting. James said Tuesday the investigation had so far revealed Qi and Yan knew each other, but police are “still exploring the relationship between” them.
Yan, 38, ran a lab with two undergraduate students, one research assistant and three PhD students, including Qi, The News & Observer reported.
Qi “went directly to the victim and then left Caudill Labs,” James said.
James said Qi’s car was located on campus and impounded, and was being processed by the FBI. James said “all indications” were that Qi fled campus on foot to Williams Circle, where he was apprehended Monday afternoon.
Qi joined the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill in 2022, after finishing a master’s degree at Louisiana State University. Before that, he completed an undergraduate degree in Physics from Wuhan University in China, according to his lab profile.
He was one of three PhD students in the Yan Research group, according to its website. The group studies photonics and material sciences.
On Twitter, Qi posted about his experience as a graduate student.
In one post, he described himself as “very enthusiastic talking about research” and wrote he would “like to make some new friends”. He also described working 60 to 80 hour weeks in the lab.
In an Aug. 18, 2022, tweet, he appeared to describe a conflict within in his lab. “Just have a talk with my PI and get his promise… He should have more experience to handle with these girls and tattletales,” Qi wrote.
A PI, or principal investigator, is often the leader of a research group who PhD students report to.
Two months earlier he tweeted: “Just feel my privacy was insulted. … I was showing the boss I am working instead of interests, devaluing the meaning of my work,” he wrote. “That’s so disgusting. Self-respect block me from working.”
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