(MONTGOMERY, Ala.) — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student wanted in the killing of a Yale student has been arrested by U.S. Marshals in Alabama after evading authorities for three months.
Qinxuan Pan, 29, was arrested in Montgomery Friday morning in connection to the death of 26-year-old Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang in New Haven, Connecticut, on Feb. 6.
“We are pleased to announce this morning, the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force, in conjunction with the U.S. Marshals Middle District of Alabama and the Montgomery Police Department, arrested Fugitive Qinxuan Pan,” the U.S. Marshals said in the statement.
Pan faces murder and second-degree larceny charges in Jiang’s death.
Police found Jiang dead from multiple gunshot wounds that night in the East Rock neighborhood, near Yale University’s campus. Police said Jiang was operating a vehicle at the time of the shooting but declined to say if he was inside or outside the car when he was killed. Authorities are investigating whether Jiang was targeted or if the shooting followed a road rage incident.
Jiang, a former member of the Army National Guard, had recently gotten engaged and was a graduate student at the Yale School of Environment, according to the university’s president. He was laid to rest at the State Veterans Cemetery in Middletown, Connecticut, in February.
Pan was accused of stealing a car from a dealership in Mansfield, Massachusetts, and swapping the plates on the day of the murder. The vehicle was found abandoned in a scrapyard in New Haven where it had gotten stuck on some railroad tracks, a warrant application for Pan’s arrest said.
Pan was initially named as a person of interest in the case on Feb. 10, then a suspect, and the search for him expanded nationwide in March. The U.S. Marshals secured an international wanted persons notice for him in April.
He was described as a 6-foot Asian American man weighing 170 pounds and was last seen in the early morning hours of Feb. 11 driving with family members in the Brookhaven or Duluth areas of Georgia. Relatives said he was carrying a black backpack and acting strange, according to U.S. Marshals.
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