UNC shooting updates: Students demand gun control with powerful newspaper front page after Chapel Hill attack

The Daily Tar Heel’s front page on Wednesday featured messages received and sent by students during the three-hour lockdown prompted by the active shooting situation on Monday.

Authorities have identified the fatal victim in Monday’s shooting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

UNC PhD student Tailei Qi has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the killing of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the department of applied physical Sciences and researcher who also served as Qi’s adviser, according to the university’s website.

Classes at the UNC Chapel Hill campus have been cancelled until Thursday following an active shooting situation that sent faculty into a panic and left one dead.

A day after the violence that led to the arrest of doctoral student Tailei Qi, therapy dogs, peace signs and messages of hope could be seen around campus as the community reeled from the traumatizing scene on Monday, WSOCTV reported.

On Wednesday, UNC’s Bell Tower will ring in honour of slain professor Zinjie Yan, who had joined the university in 2019.

Doug Chrisey, Yan’s former advisor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, shared a heartfelt tribute on Tuesday.

“He would knock on my door with incredible experimental results and a huge smile ... He would leave feeling he didn’t understand anything about the nucleation and growth of nanoparticles, but still with a huge smile,” Mr Chrisey wrote in a Facebook post, according to The News & Observer.

“He had a resting sweet face — and everything about his personality was consistent with that,”

Wen Liu, a 2022 UNC graduate who worked in the lab with Qi, said told the AP that he was “somewhat reserved” but still “pretty sociable.”

“For hours he would just be doing things and explaining along the way,” Liu said.

Liu also said that Qi would often answer other lab member’s questions with “patience and respect.”

Mr Qi appeared in court on Tuesday and was ordered held without bail. The suspect had a Mandarin interpreter during his arraignment who explained court proceedings to him and was scheduled to reappear in court next month.

Prosecutors did not share a potential motive for why Mr Qi allegedly carried out the attack on Yan. In an interview following the hearing, Orange County District Attorney Jeff Niemen said he would not be seeking the death penalty in Mr Qi’s case “or any case,” FOX8 reports.

Responding to criticism about his stance on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr Nieman said: “I was very transparent about my position on the death penalty in candidate forums.”

Tailei Qi shared several cryptic posts online after joining the University of North Carolina in 2022.

The well-educated graduate student – who previously studied at both Wuhan University and Louisiana State University – complained about bullies, aired his grievances with some “girls and tattletales” and grumbled about his head of lab.

“As soon as I got a text from a friend that a shooting was happening on campus, my heart sank,” The Independent’s Eric Garcia writes.

Shortly after the shelter-in-place order was issued, local media obtained footage of an on-campus arrest of who was believed to be the suspect in Monday’s shooting.

The young man was briefly handcuffed but was later released, with UNC police clarifying later that evening that authorities had mistaken the student, who was unaware of the lockdown, for the shooter because their “descriptions matched.”

Students of Asian descent told NBC News that they also feared they would be racially profiled before managing to find a place where they could barricade.

“We are all international Chinese. Sometimes I wear contacts but the other day I wore glasses. So I was a little bit afraid the police couldn’t differentiate me with the killer. If I came outside, I [could] also get handcuffed,” Johnson Wei told NBC.