UNC shooting update: Tailei Qi charged with murder of faculty member on Chapel Hill campus

A Twitter account believed to belong to Tailei Qi reveals that he had railed against his work and his head of lab as well as what he described as “bullies” in the US before allegedly carrying out the shooting.

In a post on 1 August 2022, he wrote: “Bully in america seems to be a problem. It often comes with people not stopping them at the first time.

“Explanation is not a solution but makes them feel others will plead them every time they raise a problem, making them voyeur to find an excuse day and night.”

Two weeks later on 18 August 2022, he tweeted about his “PI” – referring to his unnamed head of lab – handling “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.

“Then, we can just get ourselves out of these stupid topic. Let’s just focus our attention on nature.I won’t change anything if not necessary.”

Two months later in October, he referred to his PI again and an unidentified “group of people”.

“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,” he tweeted.

“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?”

In other posts, Mr Qi addressed a mystery woman who he vowed to “just let her go” and his exhaustion with his workload.

“I used to walk 80+ hours per week and I feel relaxing and energetic. Now I only work 60+ hours per week and I feel tired,” he wrote in one.

The Twitter account has the same name and the same image as both Mr Qi’s bio and the person of interest sent out by police during the brief manhunt.

It describes him as “Graduate student @UNC, engaged in light-matter interaction and related materials”.

In one post in early August – just weeks before the shooting – he issued an appeal to meet people at the college.

“I would like to make some new friends. I am a second-year PhD student, interested in nanoparticle synthesis, optical trapping, self-assembly, spectra analysis, and ML,” he said. “a bit stupid in daily trifles, very enthusiastic talking about research. Reach me if inerest.”

UNC at Chapel Hill graduate student Tailei Qi has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the on-campus shooting on Monday that left one faculty member dead.

Mr Qi, an applied physical sciences major, was not officially identified by university officials and law enforcement on Monday but was named in court documents obtained by NBC. His profile page on the university’s website was taken down as of Tuesday morning.

The fatal victim remains unidentified pending family notification, authorities said.

The suspect in the University of North Carolina shooting has been identified as graduate student Tailei Qi.

Mr Qi is a PhD student majoring in applied physical sciences major.

He was arrested on Monday afternoon and booked into Orange County Sheriff’s Office jail.

The victim has not yet been publicly identified pending the notification of next of kin. The motive for the shooting also remains unclear.

Police were searching for both the weapon and the motive in a shooting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that left one faculty member dead and prompted an hours-long lockdown amid a search for the suspect.

The assailant in Monday afternoon’s shooting at a science building in the heart of the flagship university’s campus was taken into custody about an hour and a half after the gunfire was first reported, officials said at a news conference.

Neither the suspect nor the victim were immediately identified and it wasn’t clear whether they knew each other. Formal charges were pending.

“To actually have the suspect in custody gives us an opportunity to figure out the why and even the how, and also helps us to uncover a motive and really just why this happened today. Why today, why at all?” UNC Police Chief Brian James said. “And we want to learn from this incident and we will certainly work to do our best to ensure that this never happens again on the UNC campus.”

Classes have been cancelled at the UNC Chapel Hill campus on Tuesday following the deadly shooting at a science lab on Monday.

The UNC said in an update: “Due to today’s incident on campus, UNC-Chapel Hill will operate at a Condition 2 on Tuesday, Aug. 29. This means that classes are canceled, and non-mandatory operations are suspended.

“More information and details about Condition 2 can be found on the Adverse Weather & Emergency Closing webpage. This will be in place until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 29. The University will provide more information tomorrow. For updates on alerts, visit alertcarolina.unc.edu.”

Neither the victim nor the suspect have been publicly identified by officials.

It is not clear if they knew each other prior to the shooting or if the attack was targeted or random.

At a press conference on Monday evening, police would not confirm whether or not the person arrested was the same man who was identified as a person of interest earlier in the day.

Instead, police said that they would release the suspect’s identity once charges had been filed. The victim’s identity will also be released once next of kin is identified.

The motive also remains unknown at this time.

The horror attack at the UNC campus at Chapel Hill was a somewhat familiar sight for the college community coming four years after a mass shooting over at the Charlotte campus.

Back on 30 April 2019 – onthe last day of the spring semester classes – two people were killed and four injured in a mass shooting inside a classroom in the Woodford A. Kennedy Building.

The gunman – identified as former UNCC student Trystan Andrew Terrell – was arrested soon after.

In September 2019, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced life without the possibility of parole.

Police arrested a suspected campus shooter on Monday in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Officials gave a public update on Monday evening.

A college campus in North Carolina is waking up on Tuesday gripped by fear, grief and many unanswered questions.

Just days into the start of a new term, students and faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found themselves hunkering down inside classrooms and leaping from first floor windows as an active shooting situation unfolded on site.

Inside the science building, a faculty member was found shot dead.

Following a brief moment where the wrong person was arrested – an unsuspecting individual who missed the shelter-in-place alerts – campus police confirmed that the suspect had been taken into custody around 10 minutes from the scene.

Harrowingly, the horror was a somewhat familiar sight for the UNC community coming four years after a mass shooting at the Charlotte campus left two dead and four injured.

Officials are yet to release the identities of both the suspect and the victim in this latest attack, with much of the details of what happened and why still unclear.

Here’s what we do know so far about the shooting: