I watched it again this spring, when haunting images from the mass shooting in Atlanta were still in the news, and every day seemed to bring fresh reports of harassment or assault against people who look like me. Police searched her apartment and found nothing. One says that I might have had an allergic reaction, which is the version I swear to because the alternative is unthinkable. Prisons cannot solve the problem of prevalent harm in society and are in fact part of the problem, as they perpetuate the logics of power and domination, of segregation and dehumanization, which are also the logics of patriarchy and white supremacy. She is singing a song about youth, where time is all future, brimming with possibilities. Growing up, she had a loving family; Her . Height and Weight 5'0 - 5'8, 110 - 140 pounds. People from the FBI also testified that Zhangs DNA and her blood were found inside Brendts apartment, which unmistakeably linked him to the crime. Her death was not random. According to the affidavit, authorities allege that he admitted to driving around the UI campus when he observed an Asian female with a backpack standing at a corner appearing distressed. Do It Right 2021' . Lifeng Ye, mother of slain University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband, Ronggao Zhang, left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty . After the trial, media asked for access to hundreds of documents sealed during the case. Most of them would not have known the context behind my post. Death penalty or life in prison: What if neither leads to justice? 3.2.Expression profiles of HMGB1, and TLR4 signaling molecules during APAP-induced liver injury. It was also revealed that Christensen was photographed attending a rally for the victim. According to the University of Illinois police, Zhang, a graduate student from China, disappeared on June 9, 2017. Send it to The Daily Beasthere. Two ABC news teams tell the tale of two families, tragically connected by the 2017 murder of U of I scholar Yingying Zhang. Brendt Christensen, a former graduate student, has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. She runs after another bus but narrowly misses it. Because a unanimous verdict was not reached, Christensen was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Students grouped together to find her, while the FBI was brought on to help the local police department. I pursued physics, the same discipline as her killer. The following month, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. It was invaluable. Since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic caused by a new beta . Statement from family's lawyers: @WCIA3 pic.twitter.com/SaYqeuwE3h. The prison, as Angela Davis and Gina Dent explained, is a border. Completely normal, perhaps a bit awkward but with no unusual vibes.. The alternative for a crime of this nature is life in prison. It took more than two years for Christensen to be convicted. The night ended with me being helped into an Uber, where I stayed for the next three hours. (2021 Rerelease) 02.01. . Cruel as his act was, to cast Christensen as a uniquely-depraved individual would be to ignore all the historical and contemporary acts of mass violence, of wars, genocides, slavery, and colonization. the use of decision analytic models in cost . ABC 20/20 brings into focus the kidnapping and murder of a Chinese scholar named Yingying Zhang who went missing on 9 June 2017. To lure female victims into his car, Christensen claimed to be a police officer. By this time, Zhangs family flew in from China and helped in the search. Eager to clear her boyfriends name, Bullis agreed to wear a wire for the FBI and accompany her boyfriend on a memorial walk for Zhang. Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang's remains. My mothers idea of a safe space shifted with my departure, from the immediacy of our home to the territorial bounds of a homeland. After moving to the U.S., I would soon realize how my body is perceived differently here and slowly learn how to navigate space with unwanted attention. Yingying Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, reads a statement in Chinese outside the federal courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, on Monday, June 24, 2019, moments after a 12-person jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her kidnapping and death. The investigators said that even with the information provided by Christensen, the recovery of Zhangs body will be tough. The trial, from that moment on, was no longer about the certitude of Christensens guilt but whether he deserved to die. Yingying ZHANG, Professor (Full) | Cited by 438 | of China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou | Read 47 publications | Contact Yingying ZHANG . Yingying Zhang. Zhangs father, Ronggao Zhang, said on Wednesday: If what that man said is true, it further confirms that he is a heartless and evil person. My friends meant well. Every person deserves safety, but when does justice bleed into vengeance, and how may our desires for protection embolden the systems that harm us? Zhang, circa 2017; Brendt Christensen. Brendt also had a masters in Physics but dropped out from his Ph.D. program and instead claimed that he was searching for employment. Brendt Christensen, the 29-year-old who was sentenced to life in . Title. Beckett planned to address the development at a news conference beginning at 3 p.m. CST, but that news conference was later postponed. Zhang was a visiting scholar at the university. In 2017 she went missing on her way to sign a lease, and after missing a bus. Classification Endangered Missing. ABC Murdered University of Illinois student Yingying Zhang in a family photo. With Zhang reported missing, there was a massive uproar in the university. The public execution, according to Michel Foucault, was not only a judicial but also a political ritual, through which the state manifested its absolute power. With the defense already admitting that Brendt killed Zhang, the jury did not take long to find him guilty of the crime. Missing Since 06/09/2017. Its a potent concept, appealing to our instincts. Zhang went missing on June 9, 2017, as she was headed to sign a lease for an off-campus apartment in Urbana. Yingyings disappearance quickly made headlines on both sides of the Pacific. I eventually regained some mobility and dialed a friend. Race Asian. Highly Influential Citations 1. That summer was a particularly low point in my strained relationship with my mother, and I had turned to social media for validation of my moral superiority. While a teenager in China, I had many fraught conversations with my mother about who should run errands after dark. Yingying was still missing. In my proximity to both the victim and the perpetrator, Ive felt, however presumptuously, a particular responsibility: to bear witness to the case as it unfolded, and to try to wring some sense out of this senseless tragedy. After the trial ended and public attention moved on, Yingyings disappearance has stayed with me like a needle floating in my veins. Sep 2017 - Dec 20225 years 4 months. Claim Author Page. As the case progressed, public discourse in China shifted from critiquing the skills of U.S. law enforcement to questioning the logic of its justice system. In addition to this, a memorial stone with Zhangs name was placed on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Explore Scholarly Publications and Datasets in the NSF-PAR. A bilingual memorial service for Zhang will be held on Friday in Savoy, Illinois. / CBS Chicago. The horrific details of her death were made public when Brendt Christensen was caught on an audiotape, talking about how he killed Zhang and then disposed of her body, stating that her family would never find her. Nanoscale thermal transport. Zhangs friends, too, had no idea about her whereabouts, and they were worried about the visiting student getting into trouble in an unfamiliar place. Since then, they've likely been covered by at least 30 feet of landfill. A world safe and free means that no one is left behind. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. With trucks taking their loads to landfills across the city, authorities figured that her remains might have been spread around several landfills by the time Brendt was convicted. The affidavit filed after Christensens June 2017 arrest provides chilling details; it says that authorities examined Christensens phone and alleges that he accessed a website entitled Abduction 101 and sub-threads that were called things like perfect abduction fantasy and planning a kidnapping. He had also worked as a Physics class teaching assistant. The jury was not told about his death wish. That recording provided them with the key piece of evidence outlined in the affidavit. Video showed her at an Urbana, Illinois, bus stop getting into a black Saturn vehicle, and, after that, she vanished without a trace. The heart of this question is not about measuring the harms of specific conduct but mapping the contours of state authority. When the police began looking into black Saturn Astras around the area where Zhang was last spotted, they came across one Brendt Christensen, who owned the same kind of car. Directed by Jiayan Jenny Shi, its a tender, intimate portrayal of a promising life cut short, a familys harrowing search for their beloved daughter on a foreign land, and their unrelenting quest for justice. The family of murdered Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang has finally learned what happened to the body of their beloved daughter. Also part of the case that was sealed: a motion to exclude evidence of a lost Illinois State Police badge found on the roadway four days after the disappearance of Yingying Zhang. Rights of a criminal suspect were seen as obtuse hurdles inhibiting a swift conviction. He was arrested on June 30, his 28th birthday. Her body never found, the family still hoping to someday bring her . Among the hundreds of exhibits used in the trial, theres a 90-second clip. By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. Brendt Christensen is a former Ph.D. student researcher from Champaign who was convicted by a federal jury of kidnapping in the death of Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old University of Illinois visiting scholar from China. According to Bullis, who testified during Christensens trial, she felt very conflicted because she still cared for Christensen, but she also cared about what had happened to Zhang. "An attorney whos been representing the family is evidently holding a news conference this afternoon in Urbana to discuss information the government provided the family following trial based on statements Christensen made to his attorneys late last year and prior to trial," a spokesperson for the attorney's office said in a statement. He seemed like a normal physics grad student. Christensen was found guilty on June 24, 2019, of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of lying to investigators. She played in a band and had ambitions of becoming a professor in China. Three months before he kidnapped, raped, and murdered Yingying, Christensen had sought help at the universitys counseling center, where he admitted to suicidal and homicidal ideations. Around 2 pm, a CCTV camera spotted Zhang in a bus stand located directly opposite the universitys very own radio and television station. The defense pointed to inconsistencies in her claims. In a flurry of anguished messages, she told me to stop wearing high-heels so I could run faster in case of danger. Yingying is an incredible young lady. Even as the family of Yingying Zhang acknowledges the near impossibility of her remains ever being found, . She knows how hard it is to raise a child. She walks over and leans in the passenger side window. "It is evident that any attempt to recover Yingying's remains would be complicated and expensive, would require government oversight and the cooperation of the landfill owners, and would have no certainty of success," he said. Friday the I-Team reported information that government and defense attorneys both wanted kept quiet during the trial. "If you have any humanity left in your soul, please end our torment. Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, but Christensen was prosecuted under federal law. Articles Cited by Public access. By the penalty phase, Christensen had already been found guilty. Investigation Discoverys See No Evil: Far from Home chronicles the disappearance and the horrifying ordeal Zhang had to endure before her untimely death. Follow Author. The FBI placed Christensen under surveillance and monitored his conversations. The spectacle at the scaffold routinely attracted larger crowds than any other public event. On June 15, 2017, Christensen was interviewed at the FBIs Champaign office. Brendt Christensen, 30, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for the kidnapping and killing two years ago of 26-year-old Yingying Zhang, a student at the University of Illinois Urbana . Without a body, prosecutors based their case on DNA evidence found at Christensen's apartment, and the defendant's own boasting of having killed Zhang in a conversation with his girlfriend. Yingying Zhang. Yingying Zhang. 29 Nov - Zhang Yingying and Wang Xiaofei's mother Zhang Lan seem to be butting heads when it comes to the mainland businessman, after the actress seemingly decided to declare that they are dating.. As reported on CTWant, the 26-year-old actress, who has been romantically linked to Wang for months and was even accused of being the third party in his previous marriage with Barbie Hsu, recently . After reviewing hours of interviews and hundreds of pages of documents on him, Im haunted by a sense of familiarity. He even displayed a badge. Zhang was observed on video walking to an intersection and standing at a bus stop. Prosecutor Eugene Miller alleged that Zhangs blood was found on a bat that Christensen used to strike Zhang, as well as in other places in his apartment, according to WTTW-TV. She played guitar and sang in a band called Cute Horse in China. University of Minnesota. This greatly alarmed counselors, but they later deduced that he was not in immediate need of hospitalization. That was the last anyone ever heard or saw from Zhang. Her life is frozen in time, while mine goes on. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. She wanted to make a difference in the world.. All rights reserved, WATCH: Procession Escorts Body of Fallen Chicago Officer From Hospital, Storm System Could Bring Rain, Snow, and Gusty Winds to Chicago Area Friday, Chicago Police Officer Shot and Killed on Southwest Side, Secret Service, Police Seen Investigating Business in Suburban Lisle. To date, no search has been undertaken. 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yingying zhang body found 2021