槽边往事

Suspect’s behavior recalled as bizarre

Haiyang Zhu, from Ningbo

Xi Yang, from Beijing xicheng

BLACKSBURG -- Haiyang Zhu and Xin Yang, two Chinese graduate students at Virginia Tech, seemingly were doing nothing more than enjoying a quiet conversation and a cup of coffee together Wednesday night at a campus café.

But then, the school's police chief said yesterday, Zhu abruptly pulled a knife and attacked the woman, cutting off her head.

Yesterday, as investigators searched for a motive for the attack, managers at the Blacksburg apartment complex where Zhu lived described a recent pattern of bizarre behavior that they say prompted them to alert authorities about him.

"He was rude and belligerent," said Will Segar, Zhu's landlord at Sturbridge Square Apartments. Segar said Zhu, 25, had come to Segar's attention because of his bellicose interaction with those around him.

"I talked to a Blacksburg police officer about him. I told him he's harassing other people and he's a public nuisance, and he [the officer] said he couldn't do anything and told me to talk to international affairs at Virginia Tech," Segar said.

He added that he talked with someone at Tech but got no useful advice on how to deal with Zhu.

Segar said he had to remove the thermostat from the suspect's apartment because Zhu and his two roommates refused to turn on the heat, which allowed the pipes to freeze and burst. Segar said he also had to scold Zhu about storing firewood in the middle of his carpeted floor.

Tonya Spain, property manager at Sturbridge Square, said she also has had run-ins with Zhu during the past weeks, and she called his recent behavior "very odd, very bizarre."

"Last week he came in and accused the staff of stealing his shoes," Spain said. "I said, 'You have two roommates; are you sure it wasn't one of them?' But he was adamant that staff had stolen his shoes."

. . .

Yang, 22, a recent arrival from Beijing who was studying accounting at Tech, had trusted Zhu enough to list him as an emergency contact on university documents.

According to an affidavit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, when Tech police officer Nicole Irvine responded Wednesday to a 911 call from the Au Bon Pain café in the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson Brown, she found Zhu holding Yang's severed head in his hand.

The slaying Wednesday left Tech officials once again standing before a crowd of reporters, at times answering questions and at other times admitting they didn't have the answers yesterday. The school is still coping with the April 16, 2007, massacre of 32 students and faculty members by a mentally unbalanced student.

"It was a horrific crime scene," campus Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said of Wednesday's attack.

Zhu, who came to Tech to study agriculture and applied economics, is from the Chinese port city of Ningbo. He was charged with first-degree murder and was being held without bond at the Montgomery County Jail.

. . .

Kim Beisecker, director of international students, said she knew Zhu and Yang.

"He was always polite and respectful, and she was just a darling young woman," Beisecker said yesterday.

"We had just had orientation with her, and we knew him as a student," she said.

Beisecker described Zhu as very unlike Seung-Hui Cho, who was responsible for the 2007 Tech massacre.

"This was a young man who had friends," she said of Zhu.

Acquaintances of the victim and the suspect were coming to Tech's international center yesterday for counseling, Beisecker said.

She described them as in shock but said, "I think shock is normal in an event like this."

Tech has about 2,100 international students, and the Cranwell International Center offers them support services.

. . .

Flinchum said Zhu, before Wednesday, never had been reported to campus police for any alleged violations of the law.

Yesterday, campus police obtained a warrant to search Zhu's apartment for "any weapons or restraining devices evidencing preparation or premeditation." Investigators also sought any correspondence between Yang and Zhu.

According to Tech officials, police were alerted to the attack Wednesday at 7:06 p.m., when they received two 911 calls about a female being assaulted in the café.

About one minute later, the first officer arrived and arrested Zhu. Flinchum said police also recovered a weapon, which he described as a kitchen knife.

Interviews with seven witnesses, Flinchum said, suggested Yang and Zhu were not arguing before the attack. Asked whether Zhu said or yelled anything as he held the knife, Flinchum declined to answer, saying investigators are withholding some information.

Yang died near the table where she was attacked. Later that night, officials notified her mother in China of her death.

Yang had been a student at Tech for two weeks.

. . .

At a news conference yesterday at the Inn at Virginia Tech, university President Charles W. Steger stood before reporters -- as he had many times in the aftermath of the 2007 massacre -- and expressed his grief.

"I have no doubt that many of us feel especially distraught," Steger said.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine offered his condolences as well.

"My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Xin Yang today -- and with the broader Virginia Tech community," Kaine said in a statement issued yesterday.

"The tragic attack on campus this week has no doubt revived terrible memories for countless members of the Hokie family. I urge the citizens of the commonwealth to join me in sending sympathies and support to Virginia Tech in the days and weeks to come."

Across campus yesterday, classes resumed. The Au Bon Pain café was closed, its doors taped shut, but the staff had placed pastries and coffee urns in the lobby of the Graduate Life Center, where 130 graduate students live. Yang had lived there.

Many graduate students, when asked about Yang, could not recall meeting her. Karen P. DePauw, vice president and dean for graduate education, said she did not know Zhu or Yang.

"The emotion I feel right now is real sadness for the victim's family and the challenges they will face," she said.

. . .

Students, alerted to the attack Wednesday by e-mail, phone and text messages, said yesterday that the slaying, though grim, had not altered the mood on campus noticeably.

"The teachers weren't really talking about it this morning," said freshman Michelle Flickinger of Burke. "But everybody was talking about it [Wednesday] night."

Segar, Zhu's landlord, said Zhu showed up in the administrative offices of the apartment complex around Jan. 12 with a Chinese woman in her early 20s who said she had arrived Jan. 8. Zhu was trying to help her get an apartment, but the woman refused to provide some required information on the application and the two left.

Zhu's roommates, identified by Segar as Tech students Ming Yi and Lei Pan, could not be reached for comment. The door of their two-story apartment was locked yesterday.

Zhu's Blog: Ocean's ocean