"There is nothing in the world that we want more than to find our daughter and bring her home. The chest infection was so severe that her heart did not respond to CPR during surgery. 1007/S11426-021 . He confessed to posing as an undercover police officer and picking Zhang up before bringing her back to his apartment. 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 . 13. (Matt Masterson / WTTW News) Follow Author. 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. She gets off the bus. Since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic caused by a new beta . Apr 7, 2021 Weeks before, a 26-year-old visiting scholar from China went missing on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Ten of the 12 jurors voted for the death penalty. Yingying Zhang was a 26-year-old visiting Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who went . Yingying was still missing. Audio and video recordings were played for a federal jury in the murder-kidnapping trial of Brendt Christensen on Friday --- including a recording of Christensen's chilling account of how he kidnapped and murdered Yingying Zhang, a promising young environmental engineer from China in June 2017. It creates and reinforces a binary: us versus them, good versus evil, the deserving versus the unwanted. She was 26. The same jury who convicted him later split on the death penalty. People from the FBI also testified that Zhangs DNA and her blood were found inside Brendts apartment, which unmistakeably linked him to the crime. electronic edition via DOI; unpaywalled version; references . Shraman Mitra. "A lot of news coverage of . The trial, from that moment on, was no longer about the certitude of Christensens guilt but whether he deserved to die. 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. Cruel as his act was, to cast Christensen as a uniquely-depraved individual would be to ignore all the historical and contemporary acts of mass violence, of wars, genocides, slavery, and colonization. With no news of the Chinese student for several hours, university authorities decided to approach the police and file a missing person report. A jury convicted Christensen of all charges in her death after 90 minutes of deliberation in June. I am passionate . Authorities narrowed their search down to 18 four-door Saturn Astra vehicles registered in Champaign County and interviewed the owners. The night ended with me being helped into an Uber, where I stayed for the next three hours. To do this, representative systems must be strategically selected to stimulate students' motivation. Ph.D. student at Unversity of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Ying Ying Zhang, Her Name Means "A Twinkle Of Light," But Her Light Was Taken Away; who Was Yingying Zhang? The U.S. Attorney's office in the Central District of Illinois said Zhang's remains have not been found. While the countrys Criminal Procedure Law forbids extorting confessions or collecting evidence by illegal means, the regulations contain many loopholes and are poorly enforced. With a confession on hand, the FBI arrested Brendt Christensen and charged him with the murder of Yingying Zhang. Her body has never been found. 43 Issue (2): 234-246. doi: 10.13284/j.cnki.rddl.003620. Amidst a global pandemic caricatured as a product of Asian pathology, my birth country has descended further down the abyss of authoritarianism, my adopted home teeters on the brink of fascism, and relations between the two superpowers are at their lowest point in decades. 2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Her name was Yingying Zhang. Its generally estimated to be in the thousands and accounts for 80 percent or more of state executions globally. its incredibly painful, Bullis said in court, according to CBS Local. 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. This is based on the information given by Christensens defense lawyers. After moving to the U.S., I would soon realize how my body is perceived differently here and slowly learn how to navigate space with unwanted attention. Born 12/21/1990, she grew up in the Jianyang District, Nanping City, Fujian Province, China. While the case was put to rest in court, the same cannot be said for Zhangs family who continue to live the loss of their daughter, as stated by them, was their pride and joy. Based on the statements made by Christensen to federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity, he butchered her body in three separate garbage bags and put them in the dumpster outside his apartment. What does the cage accomplish? Yingying ZHANG, Professor (Full) | Cited by 438 | of China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou | Read 47 publications | Contact Yingying ZHANG . Friends offered up advice in the comments below. People line up outside the federal courthouse for the first appearance of Brendt Christensen on July 3, 2017. According to his lawyers, Christensen placed her butchered body in three separate garbage bags, which he tossed in a dumpster outside his Champaign apartment before disposing of her personal items among trash receptacles around the Champaign-Urbana area. In my proximity to both the victim and the perpetrator, Ive felt, however presumptuously, a particular responsibility: to bear witness to the case as it unfolded, and to try to wring some sense out of this senseless tragedy. They also found evidence of a part of the car being cleaned extra thoroughly, which hinted towards Brendt hiding something. Cultural difference makes for a convenient excuse to validate the self and exoticize the other. 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. ABC '20/20' brings into focus the kidnapping and murder of a Chinese scholar named Yingying Zhang who went missing on 9 June 2017. ? or IF he was free? Most sexual assaults are never reported and fewer than three percent lead to a conviction. Revisiting Yingyings story at this moment is not only relevant, but also necessary. He told authorities that he was at home around the time in question. Alpha, our German Shepherd dog, left us forever on Feb 28, 2021. The U.S. is the only Western democracy that regularly executes people. 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. When we turn away from the face of the condemned, were in fact refusing to look at ourselves, to confront our culpability in systems of oppression, to recognize the glimmer of humanity in the darkest corner. Powered by. Zhang's body has not been found. "There is nothing in the world that we want more than to find our daughter and bring . In addition to this, a memorial stone with Zhangs name was placed on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That was just hours before Zhang was seen getting into Christensen's black Saturn Astra, the last time she was seen alive. The federal government was seeking the death penalty. Beckett said, after the trial, Zhang's family met with federal prosecutors on July 25, and were told what Christensen's defense attorneys had revealed about what he did with Zhang's remains. In 2017 she went missing on her way to sign a lease, and after missing a bus. I work in in the Team for Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment (TEEHTA). She said she was running behind, but would arrive about 2:10 p.m. At 1:35 p.m., she was observed on video boarding a public bus. Ph.D., 2016, Xiamen University. The jury was not told about his death wish. ABC reports that Bullis testified that she Christensen seemed excited and proud when he discussed killing Zhang. He was recorded confessing to killing her and has an online history at FetLife re . 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. I download it and press play. 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. The U.S. Attorney for Central Illinois, John Milhiser, as he spoke, Zhang's mother, Lifeng Ye, sobbed and the woman standing next to her appeared to be holding her upright. 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 said if his daughter's remains are ever found, her family plans to take her body back to China. 224. Her remains have never been found. Photo: Robin Scholz/The News-Gazette via AP. "Due to the compaction process, Yingying's bodily remains may be very, very small in size," Beckett said. Prosecutors indicated in court filings that Christensen may have destroyed the remains. Ive spoken with many friends and colleagues in physics about this case. Author pages are created from data sourced from our academic publisher partnerships and public sources. We now understand that finding her may be impossible," he said. On June 9, 2017, Yingying had left to catch a bus to go view an apartment to rent and was never seen alive again. WTTW-TVs Matt Masterson also reported on Wednesday that Christensen has not and will not file an appeal to his convictions. All Rights Reserved. The only emotion I sensed during those hours of paralysis was an eerie calmness akin to closure, like I had spent my entire life treading the edge of a cliff and finally had to surrender to the air. Copyright 2023 WLS-TV. Tropical Geography 2023, Vol. After this, he allegedly disposed her personal items, around the Champaign-Urbana area. 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 . "We hope it will be a solemn place of reflection to all who visit, a place to remember the joy Yingying brought to her family and to everyone she met during her life," her father said. Associate Professor, Tsinghua University - Cited by 8,825 - Nanomaterials - Nanochemistry - Carbon nanotubes It took more than two years for Christensen to be convicted. October 1, 2021, 7:30am. Two days later, he put her personal belongings including her clothes, backpack, cell phone, and books into a duffel bag, and drove around the Champaign-Urbana area, throwing them in various dumpsters. Zhang was remembered as intelligent and extroverted. Her boyfriend, Xiaolin Hou, testified that the family's only hope was that Zhang's body will be found so they can bury her in China. 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. Her disappearance was big news in China as well as the United States as the Urbana-Champaign community mobilized to find the promising young environmental engineer who was researching crop production. Age 26 years old. Dated June 1, 2017, it concludes with a line in English, Life is too short to be ordinary!. Video showed her at an Urbana, Illinois, bus stop getting into a black Saturn vehicle, and, after that, she vanished without a trace. I am a research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics (CHE), University of York. Reactions: ShHolmz, altojack, MajorHoople and 8 others. 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. 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. 3.2.Expression profiles of HMGB1, and TLR4 signaling molecules during APAP-induced liver injury. CHICAGO (CBS) -- The family of slain Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang said Wednesday they now know where her body might have been dumped, but that it might be impossible to find her remains more than two years after her brutal murder. 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. She is singing a song about youth, where time is all future, brimming with possibilities. Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, but Christensen was prosecuted under federal law. Prosecutors and Zhang's family had pushed for the death penalty, but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous. (MORE: Man found guilty of killing visiting Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang) Mike Christensen believes Zhang's killing could have been avoided if counselors took action then and there. Incarceration does not stop or reduce harm in society; it relocates individual harm to places outside public view and promulgates institutional harm in the name of justice. Share; . The moment the page loaded, I looked away. 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. The menacing images appear to come alive, two monsters manifesting the paucity of our moral imagination. While a teenager in China, I had many fraught conversations with my mother about who should run errands after dark. However, calls and texts to Zhangs phone went unanswered, and the worry heightened with time. Jul 2021; Xu Junhao; Yingying Zhang . A new documentary, Finding Yingying, premiered at film festivals last year to critical acclaim and is now available on streaming platforms. At this time, they think the most prudent thing to do is to allow the authorities to handle the situation and undertake the recovery of Yingyings remains if it is feasible, according to the statement. Christensen mengajak Zhang untuk naik . Brendt also had a masters in Physics but dropped out from his Ph.D. program and instead claimed that he was searching for employment. He was convicted two years later. It just adds to the tragedy, Miller said, because Zhangs family doesnt have her body back. Yingying's body has never been found. In that split second of irrational fear, I took solace in the fact that he is behind bars. We share the same feelings. 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. On the 9 th of June 2017 a 26 year old Chinese scholar studying at the University of Illinois went missing. The defense attorneys opening statement shocked everyone in the courtroom. The defense pointed to inconsistencies in her claims. Just imagine a woman opening a water tank and deliberately drowning herself in it. Determined to find a closure to the case, authorities decided to turn to CCTVs as a last-ditch effort to locate her. University of Minnesota. On Friday, June 9, Yingying left the office during lunch hour to sign a lease for a new apartment across town. 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