The Wisconsin native had just graduated from UIUC with a masters degree in physics, after deciding that a Ph.D. was not for him. Now, among the familiar sight and through the familiar sound, I also see Yingying. After a mistrial, Hernandez, 56, was convicted at a second trial in 2017. Beckett said Christensen's defense attorneys told federal prosecutors what he did with Zhang's body in November 2018, but the information was provided under a grant of immunity, so prosecutors could not disclose the information to anyone until after the trial. The case is being featured on 20/20 on November 15, 2019. The defense was signaling to the jury that life in prison is already a very harsh sentence and sufficient punishment for this crime. Three days before Christensens arrest, the Chinese government had just issued new rules aimed at curbing police abuse. Brendt was also ordered to pay a hefty fine of $250,000 for each conviction. He was convicted two years later. Completely normal, perhaps a bit awkward but with no unusual vibes.. Cultural difference makes for a convenient excuse to validate the self and exoticize the other. It's June 12, 2019, two years and three days after Yingying went missing, the first day of the jury trial in the United States v. Brendt Christensen. The attorney argued he had mental health issues and the case was essentially to set up the next phase of the trial, Christensens sentencing. My friends suggest that I was drugged. But I also knew the real point of tension between us in relation to this case had nothing to do with criminal procedure. However, theres no doubt, sadly, that Zhang is dead. Reports also claim that Brendt claimed to be a serial killer, but that claim has never been substantiated and is believed to be false. She was 26. We were the same age. August 7, 2019 / 6:12 PM It doesnt reveal whom Christensen was allegedly speaking with at the time. Yingying Zhang was known as a compassionate, talented, joyous, and intelligent woman. 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. As I was preparing to write this essay, I spent an evening at my favorite restaurant, where I ate dinner and sipped two glasses of wine by the bar. Attorney Steve Beckett, who represents Zhangs family, said last week that defense lawyers provided the information about Zhangs remains as part of an immunity agreement in November 2018, telling prosecutors that Zhangs body was likely in a landfill in Vermilion County in Illinois. Beckett said, so far, no search has begun at the landfill for Zhang's body. Penculikan dan pembunuhan Yingying Zhang terjadi di Urbana, Illinois, Amerika Serikat pada tanggal 9 Juni 2017 ketika Zhang, seorang sarjana tamu di Universitas Illinois Urbana-Champaign, diculik oleh Brendt Allen Christensen, seorang warga kota Champaign dan alumni jurusan fisika di universitas yang sama. In the previous study, we revealed that SMA/CORM2, through releasing CO induced macrophage reprogramming toward M2 polarization fulfills the anti-inflammatory effect and promotes liver regeneration (Song et al., 2021).However, besides the macrophage-mediated inflammatory process, other inflammation . Yingying Zhang. Beckett said, after the trial, Zhang's family met with federal prosecutors on July 25, and were told what Christensen's defense attorneys had revealed about what he did with Zhang's remains. Its worth cannot, and should not, be measured by the extent of state-sponsored punishment exacted on the man who took it. Copyright 2023 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. Her life was swallowed by the dark currents of race, gender, and border politics. Christensen stated that he offered the Asian female a ride. 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 stands by the bus stop beneath a tree. The defense attorneys opening statement shocked everyone in the courtroom. I pretended that our discussion was an academic exercise because I could not bear the thought that in the fragile mind of my mother, who had raised me as a young widow, Yingying was me and I was her. According to ABC News, Law enforcement believes the bags were then taken to a landfill in Danville, Illinois. But it was too late to recover her body. She wanted to make a difference in the world.. However, just three minutes later, the car returned, and Zhang was seen getting into it. If Yingyings remains are ever found, we will return to take her home to China where she belongs, her father said, according to ABC 7. Zhang, circa 2017; Brendt Christensen. Born to a working-class family in the southern city of Nanping, Yingying received her masters degree from Peking University and worked as a research assistant at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. A memorial stone engraved with Yingying Zhang's name in both English and Chinese on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in June 2019, two years after her disappearance. (Feature Image Credit: ABC 20/20). In June 2017, Yingying Zhang, a young scholar from China went missing from a bus stop near the University of Illinois.The entire encounter was caught on nearby surveillance cameras. (Photo by Mark Van Moer) Inset, top: Yingying Zhang (Courtesy University of Illinois Police Department). After the trial, media asked for access to hundreds of documents sealed during the case. Incarceration does not stop or reduce harm in society; it relocates individual harm to places outside public view and promulgates institutional harm in the name of justice. To be a Chinese student or scholar in the U.S. is to chart a lonely existence. When we turn away from the face of the condemned, were in fact refusing to look at ourselves, to confront our culpability in systems of oppression, to recognize the glimmer of humanity in the darkest corner. Body found later in a water tank at the top of the hotel, the coroner stated that she died by drowning. At present, Brendt Christensen is a federal prisoner serving his life sentence at the United States Penitentiary, Coleman II, in Florida. The portion of that private landfill that was being actively used at the time was about half a football field in width, and, by the time Christensens attorneys informed authorities about the remains, they would have purportedly been covered by at least 30 feet of fill from later garbage hauling., It is evident that any attempt to recover Yingyings remains would be complicated and expensive, would require government oversight and the cooperation of the landfill owners and would have no certainty of success, said the statement. HER BODY HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND. She said she was running behind, but would arrive about 2:10 p.m. At 1:35 p.m., she was observed on video boarding a public bus. Shes gone forever. The backdrop to her stage features a spiraling pattern in green, yellow, and white: a clock turned upside down. Amidst a global pandemic caricatured as a product of Asian pathology, my birth country has descended further down the abyss of authoritarianism, my adopted home teeters on the brink of fascism, and relations between the two superpowers are at their lowest point in decades. The night ended with me being helped into an Uber, where I stayed for the next three hours. The judge has denied bail for Christensen. The same power structures undergird the institutions tasked with holding her killer accountable. My height makes me more visible. Ying Ying Zhang, Her Name Means "A Twinkle Of Light," But Her Light Was Taken Away; who Was Yingying Zhang? I am a research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics (CHE), University of York. She is gone. Torture during detention is commonplace in China. On most days, its barely noticeable; then suddenly, the sharp end declares its piercing presence. YINGYING ZHANG WAS ABDUCTED AND MURDERED IN 2017. Prosecutors indicated in court filings that Christensen may have destroyed the remains. Yingying ZHANG | Cited by 11,350 | of Tsinghua University, Beijing (TH) | Read 163 publications | Contact Yingying ZHANG She runs after another bus but narrowly misses it. After her education, she planned on marrying her fianc and eventually returning to China to become a teacher. Berkeley host: Professor Dan Portnoy Research Summary. I feel sorry that Ive brought knowledge of this gruesome crime to people dear to me, but Ive always felt responsible for Yingyings death, that Im complicit by my profession. 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. 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 Beckett, a follow-up investigation determined the dumpster where Christensen placed Yingying Zhang's body was picked up three days after her murder, and the contents were taken to a private landfill near Danville, where they were compacted at least twice. In fact, the details of how Zhang died, which came out during trial, were awful. The surveillance video was provided by University of Illinois police. A jury convicted Christensen of all charges in her death after 90 minutes of deliberation in June. Christensen was convicted of kidnapping and killing Zhang at trial in June, and later was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release. The same jury who convicted him later split on the death penalty. Speaking through an interpreter at Christensen's sentencing, Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, appealed to him to reveal where her body is so that the family can take her remains back to China. My research interests include economic evaluations of complex (public) health interventions and personalized healthcare. One of them, a law student, noted that the presumption of innocence is a first principle and a literally foundational American value.. "The Zhang family reports this as information they have received and cannot vouch for its truth," he said in a statement. He could have been a colleague, a classmate, someone I encountered at a conference: a white guy who takes whiteness and manhood for granted, who uses nonchalance to mask his insecurity, who can act polite but will never see me as his equal. With Zhang reported missing, there was a massive uproar in the university. 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. That recording provided them with the key piece of evidence outlined in the affidavit. The issues of racism, misogyny, and mental health crises in the sciences and in graduate school did not start with Christensen and have not vanished with his incarceration. Race Asian. Zhangs family reportedly provided the first gift for the endowment. Yingyings life was precious. 43 Issue (2): 234-246. doi: 10.13284/j.cnki.rddl.003620. About. Her disappearance was big news in China as well as the United States as the Urbana-Champaign community mobilized to find the promising young environmental engineer who was researching crop production. Facebook reminds me that I have a memory from four years ago. Just imagine a woman opening a water tank and deliberately drowning herself in it. As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Christensen worked briefly on the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds largest particle physics experiment where I spent over a decade of my career. The only logical explanation, as far as I can tell, is that the jurors were only thinking about violence outside prison, whether Christensen would be able to commit it himself (impossible) or persuade someone on the outside to (unlikely). Both the darkness and the light are part of what makes us human. Powered by. I argued that its safer for me because Im tall. At the sentencing phase of the Christensen trial, one of the aggravating factors the jury agreed with was Yingyings particular vulnerability due to her small stature and limited ability to communicate in English. Ten thousand years of civilization and were still relying on physical size for protection. Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. A US former doctoral student has been spared the death penalty for kidnapping and murdering a 26-year-old Chinese scholar, prompting widespread anger in China. 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. Im one year older than Yingying. Im puzzled over this question to the judge, why the distinction was necessary. Yingying Zhang's mother, Lifeng Ye, sobs as her husband addresses the media. Brendt Christensen, 30, kidnapped, tortured and killed U of I scholar Yingying Zhang in 2018. In addition to this, a memorial stone with Zhangs name was placed on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yingying was still missing. The FBI approached Bullis, who was very confident about Brendts innocence. He later advised, however, he must have been either sleeping or he was playing video games at his residence all day. He admitted the car belonged to him, the affidavit said. 224. Do It Right 2021' . Ph.D., 2016, Xiamen University. After this, he allegedly disposed her personal items, around the Champaign-Urbana area. . Rights of a criminal suspect were seen as obtuse hurdles inhibiting a swift conviction. But as I research this story, she appears so young to me, like a distant reminiscence. He seemingly boasted about choking, sexually assaulting, and beating Zhang to death with a baseball bat. In 1988, Democratic nominee for president Michael Dukakis would see his candidacy doomed as he answered no to this debate question: If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer? He lost to George H. W. Bush, whose team ran a series of attack ads, using the likeness of one Black criminal to stoke racial fear. She called Christensen a demon. 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