UNC Chapel Hill shooting victim identified as associate professor Zijie Yan

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

UNC PhD student Tailei Qi, 34, 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 a researcher. Mr Yan was listed as his alleged killer’s academic advisor on Mr Qi’s UNC profile, which has since been removed from the university’s website.

Yan joined UNC in 2019. Before that, he was an assistant professor at Clarkson University in New York following a postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago.

Mr Qi and Yan co-authored several research papers, the latter having been published just last month. But on tweets from an account believed to belong to Mr Qi, the alleged shooter complained about “bullies and his “PI” – referring to his unnamed head of lab – being unable to handle “these girls and tattletales”.

“Just have a talk with my PI and get his promise. He should have more experience to handle with these girls and tattletales,” he wrote.

Two months later in October, he referred to his PI again: “Both the group of people to say I am lazy and that to prove me working hard instead of telling me that are trying to consume my privacy. I judge their motivation is only to tell my PI then control me by taletelling.”

“But it’s weird when I talked about it with my PI, he said no people spoke to him about that. so it’s nothing but some voyeurism for these people?”

Mr Qi is expected to appear in court later on Tuesday.

This is a developing story … check again for updates.