UNC shooting updates: Graduate student Tailei Qi complained about Chapel Hill professor Zijie Yan online before attack

Hundreds of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill marched in a rally, demanding that lawmakers address gun violence across the state.

Students from different groups, including March For Our Lives and Students Demand Action, participated in the rally while holding up a large banner that read: “This is our reality.”

“In a matter of seconds, we went from taking notes, walking in the quad, being at home, to being forced to run, barricade the doors; there’s nothing normal about returning to school tomorrow,” said Kyle Lumsden, a volunteer with UNC Students Demand Action, according to The News&Observer.

“There’s nothing normal about hearing from people, ‘Thoughts and prayers,’ and the continuous idea that we cannot prevent these tragedies.”

Mitchell Pinsky, a UNC graduate student and member of Students Demand Action, added: “We can’t even make it a full two weeks without gun violence wreaking havoc on our campus.”

Harrowingly, the horror on Monday was a somewhat familiar sight for the UNC community coming four years after a mass shooting at the Charlotte campus.

Back on 30 April 2019 – on the 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.

Heartwrenching videos show students hiding under desks and jumping from classroom windows during an active shooter situation the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The campus was placed on lockdown for several hours on Monday afternoon after an alert went out about an “armed person”. Police later confirmed one member of the faculty was killed and a suspect, identified as graduate student Tailei Qi, was taken into custody.

The motive for the shooting, which took place at the centre of the campus in one of the science buildings, remains unclear.

Throughout much of the active situation, those under the “shelter in place” order did not have any idea what was going on.

Videos posted to social media captured sirens wailing as students and faculty barricaded themselves in dorms, bathrooms, classrooms, and gyms across the sprawling grounds.

A graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill has been charged with first-degree murder over the on-campus shooting that left one faculty member dead.

Tailei Qi, a second-year PhD student majoring in applied physical sciences, has been charged with the fatal shooting of his academic advisor, Zijie Yan. Mr Qi is facing charges of first-degree murder and carrying a weapon while on campus.

The suspect appeared in court on Tuesday and had an interpreter explain to him what happened in the courtroom in Mandarin, the Associated Press reports. He was ordered held without bond and his next court hearing was scheduled for 18 September.

A motive was not immediately clear. Chancellor Kevin M Guskiewicz said in a statement on Tuesday that he has met with the family of the slain assistant professor’s family.

“My leadership team and I have met with his colleagues and family to express our condolences on behalf of our campus,” the statement read. “Please join me in thinking and praying for his family and loved ones during this difficult time.”

Authorities have identified the faculty member killed 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.

Before joining UNC in 2019, he was an assistant professor at Clarkson University in New York and received postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago. The slain professor leaves behind two young daughters.

A student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—who was also a Parkland school shooting survivor—said she was “forced to relive grief” following the UNC shooting this week.

Bella Miller was a freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018 when a gunman opened fire at his former high school, killing 17 people.

Shortly after the shelter-in-place order was issued, local media obtained footage of an on-campus arrest of who was believed to be the suspect in Monday’s shooting.

The young man was briefly handcuffed but was later released, with UNC police clarifying later that evening that authorities had mistaken the student, who was unaware of the lockdown, for the shooter because their “descriptions matched.”

Students of Asian descent told NBC News that they also feared they would be racially profiled before managing to find a place where they could barricade.

“We are all international Chinese. Sometimes I wear contacts but the other day I wore glasses. So I was a little bit afraid the police couldn’t differentiate me with the killer. If I came outside, I [could] also get handcuffed,” Johnson Wei told NBC.

“As soon as I got a text from a friend that a shooting was happening on campus, my heart sank,” The Independent’s Eric Garcia writes.