A Chapel Hill man has been found guilty in the 2014 murder of a UNC professor.
A jury returned a guilty verdict in the first-degree murder trial of Troy Arrington on Thursday.
The jury was given the case on Wednesday afternoon and deliberated for approximately five hours over the course of Wednesday into Thursday morning.
Arrington has been in custody since he was arrested in July 2014 for the murder of Feng Liu, who was a research professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Liu was hit in the head with what officials have described as a landscaping rock while walking around the Chapel Hill campus. Liu was also robbed at the scene, and Arrington was found guilty on a charge of armed robbery on Thursday.
District Attorney Jim Woodall was not pursuing the death penalty in this case, meaning that the only sentence available for a guilty verdict was life in prison without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder conviction. But Woodall asked for a separate sentence for the armed robbery charge due to the “brutal and senseless case.”
Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour sentenced Arrington to between 128 months and 166 months in prison to run at the expiration of the life sentence.
Arrington did not testify in the trial and replied, “No, I’m good,” when Baddour asked him if he had anything to say during sentencing.
Arrington was arrested along with Derrick Davis.
Davis’ trial will be held at a later date, and Woodall said Davis is facing the same charges as Arrington.
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