Murder of Yingying Zhang
American murder case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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On June 9, 2017, Yingying 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. Christensen, who investigators claimed aspired to be a serial killer, lured Zhang into his car at a bus stop on campus posing as a police officer with the promise of a ride after she missed a bus, but then took her to his apartment where he raped and murdered her.
Murder of Yingying Zhang | |
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Location | Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, U.S. |
Date | June 9, 2017 |
Attack type | Torture murder, rape, choking, beating, bludgeoning, stabbing, kidnapping, decapitation |
Victim | Yingying Zhang |
Perpetrator | Brendt Allen Christensen |
Motive | Unknown |
Verdict | Guilty on all counts |
Convictions | |
Sentence | Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole plus 10 years |
On June 30, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested and charged Christensen in federal court. Christensen was tried and convicted of one count of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of making false statements to agents of the FBI, but the jury deadlocked on whether or not to impose the death penalty. Christensen was thus sentenced on July 18, 2019, to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole plus 10 years.