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Post by Admin on Jun 30, 2017 19:20:46 GMT
The FBI announced this week it had found the Saturn. But Zhang still hasn't been found. Her devastated family made the journey from China to Champaign, Illinois, in hopes of finding more answers. They don't have any. Instead, they have theories. "It could be because she is here, and she felt that the campus is very safe, and therefore she was less guarded," Ye said Thursday. "The other reason could be because she was to sign a lease with the landlord, and she was late, and so she was eager to be there on time," the aunt said. "And that, perhaps, sort of triggered her to decide to get into the car. We can't think of any other reason that she would randomly jump into a stranger's car."
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Post by Admin on Jul 2, 2017 19:23:11 GMT
Federal authorities have arrested and charged a 28-year-old man with kidnapping Yingying Zhang, a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois who disappeared three weeks ago and now is presumed dead. Brendt Christensen, a former Ph.D. candidate who had studied physics at the university, was arrested late Friday, according to a news release from the Department of Justice. A federal complaint also was filed Friday in the Central District of Illinois accusing him of kidnapping Zhang from the Urbana-Champaign campus the afternoon of June 9. Christensen's former academic advisor, professor Lance Cooper, associate head for graduate programs in the Department of Physics, was part of the committee that admitted Christensen to the program in fall 2013. "Nobody saw this coming," Cooper said Saturday. Zhang, 26, arrived at the University of Illinois in late April to contribute to research in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Her appointment as a scholar was through April 2018.
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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2017 19:46:43 GMT
The crowd of demonstrators who rallied behind Yingying Zhang’s family included hundreds of students, professors and concerned strangers. It also included the man suspected of kidnapping her, officials say. A photo taken by CNN’s Kaylee Hartung at Thursday’s rally shows Brendt Christensen, the man who would later be identified as the suspect, in the upper right corner, the University of Illinois and campus police said. University police confirmed the man standing by himself in a dark T-shirt with his left hand on a railing as Christensen, said Robin Kaler, associate chancellor for public affairs at the University of Illinois.
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Post by Admin on Jul 28, 2017 19:12:56 GMT
Brendt Christensen pleaded not guilty Thursday to one count of kidnapping in connection with the disappearance of Yingying Zhang, a University of Illinois student from China. Several members of Zhang's family attended the arraignment, including her father and an aunt. Her boyfriend was also in the room at the federal court in Urbana. Judge Eric Long asked Christensen questions about his mental health, whether he was under a doctor's care or had ever been in a hospital. Christensen said no. Christensen said he is taking antidepressants. "We look forward to defending vigorously the rights of our client in this case," defense attorney Anthony Bruno told reporters. "I think it's important that we all wait to the evidence is in to draw conclusions about what has happened in this case."
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Post by Admin on Aug 8, 2017 19:53:09 GMT
The British model who was held captive for six days as fiends tried to sell her on the internet as a sex slave feared for her life “second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour,” she told reporters in accounts published Sunday. “I’ve been through a terrifying experience,” 20-year-old Chloe Ayling told The Telegraph after returning to her native UK. One of the plot’s masterminds was Lukasz Pawel Herba, a Polish national with ties to the shadowy underground network the Black Death Group. Ayling provided excrutiating new details of her terrifying ordeal, which unfolded rapidly after she arrived at what she thought was a modeling assignment July 11. “A person wearing black gloves came from behind and put one hand on my neck and one on my mouth to stop me from screaming,” she said. “A second person wearing a black balaclava gave me an injection in my right forearm. I think I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was wearing a pink bodysuit and the socks I am wearing now. “I realized I was in the [trunk] of a car with my wrists and ankles handcuffed, adhesive tape on my mouth. I was inside a bag and was only able to breathe through a small hole.”
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