US teens charged with murder of Chinese student
Print Edition
FOUR teenagers in the United States were charged on Tuesday with murder after beating a Chinese student to death with a baseball bat and wrench as he walked home.
Ji Xinran, 24, an engineering student at the University of Southern California, was attacked last Thursday. After the assault he was able to make his way to his apartment where a roommate discovered him dead hours later.
The defendants — Alberto Ochoa, 17, Alejandra Guerrero, 16, Andrew Garcia, 18, and Jonathan Del Carmen, 19 — will be arraigned on August 12 on one count each of murder.
Garcia, Ochoa and Guerrero will also face a special allegation that they personally used a dangerous weapon — the bat and wrench.
“For any family this is a horrible tragedy, but it’s magnified by the fact that these Chinese families have sent their children so far away, expecting that this was the best possible thing,” Clayton Dube, executive director of the USC US-China Institute, said about Ji.
Dube, who told Ji’s mother of her only child’s death, said the university is working with the US and Chinese governments to get Ji’s parents to the US from Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Ji’s parents, Ji Songbo and Du Jinhui, said in a statement on Tuesday that they are struggling to get visas. They also said they are “deeply concerned” about students at the university, especially those from China.
“We hope USC can enhance security and guarantee the safety of USC students,” they said.
“We do not want to see another incident like this,” they said. “No parents should have to bear this pain.”
Ji had excelled at one of China’s best universities and won a scholarship for excellence in research and innovation, according to the university.
He had just escorted a study partner home when he was attacked, Dube said.
China’s consulate general in Los Angeles called Ji’s death cruel and said it was concerned about student safety. Students were reminded to take extra precautions and representatives reached out to US authorities to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese students, the consulate said in a statement.
In 2012, two USC students from China were fatally shot during an off-campus robbery. Attorney Daniel Deng, who is representing their families, urged Beijing to declare USC an unsafe place to study.
The attack also prompted the university to review its program for educating foreign students about safety issues.
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