Wednesday marks a sobering anniversary for the UNC community as, one year ago, a faculty member was shot and killed within a research lab. The university will hold a recognition at the bell tower at 1:15 p.m., playing Hark the Sound to honor Zijie Yan’s legacy and memory.
The incident and its immediate aftermath left the campus shaken – and has led to several reviews of the university’s response and preparedness for such emergencies.
Zijie Yan. (Photo via UNC Department of Applied Physical Sciences.)
The Tragedy
UNC Police received a 911 call at 1:02 p.m. on August 28, 2023, reporting shots fired at Caudill Laboratory, located at South Road. Minutes later, police officers arrived and an Alert Carolina message was sent out to the campus community about an armed and dangerous person on campus. Many people sheltered in place and waited close to three hours for an all-clear message. Not long after, the Carolina community learned more details of the tragedy.
UNC Police Chief Brian James and Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz later identified Department of Applied Physical Sciences Professor Zijie Yan as the lone death in the shooting – allegedly killed by Tailei Qi, who was a graduate student researcher in Yan’s lab and who authorities arrested off campus 2 miles north of the building. Yan had worked at the university since 2019.
Qi was charged by UNC Police with first-degree murder and possession of a weapon on educational property. While investigators sought answers, those around UNC mourned Yan and held gatherings to help process the day’s events. That included a vigil at the bell tower, protests on campus calling for gun reform, and a candlelight ceremony with Yan’s family in the Dean Smith Center.
Theo Dingemans, the department chair, shared comments about Yan alongside Guskiewicz and a string quartet that played various tributes to the professor.
“Zijie was one of the kindest [people] I’ve ever met,” said Dingemans. “He was soft-spoken, he was a great listener, and he actually had a wonderful sense of humor. On Monday, August 28, all of this came to an end. Zijie’s family and his students have to move on without him. The APS department has lost a wonderful colleague.”
Theo Dingemans, the chair of the Applied Physical Sciences Department where Zijie Yan worked, speaks at the university’s vigil on Wednesday about his colleague.
The Response
In the following days, UNC’s emergency management team began its after-action review of the shooting and began to take assessment from its community on what could be improved. One of the top responses was updating the wording in Alert Carolina messages sent out – which, just before the anniversary of the shooting, the university did. Now, the messages will include detailed language about finding a safe place from the threat and what to do if confronted. The changes also include a new policy where the alerts will be sent routinely until an ‘all clear’ message is given, and all university operations will be paused until the threat to safety is gone.
Additionally, the university updated its buildings to ensure all rooms have interior locks and more messaging about what to do in an emergency. To help with surveillance of campus, the UNC Police Department began a partnership with the license plate reading system Flock Safety.
Ahead of Wednesday’s one-year mark of the shooting, Chancellor Lee Roberts shared a letter with the campus community offering the university’s mental health resources and a message of encouragement.
“While I was not yet at Carolina when this event occurred,” he wrote, “I have spoken with many about the direct impact this experience had on students, faculty, staff, parents and our local community. I’ve been grateful to learn about the ways our community came together during such a difficult and scary time.
“Safety on campus is always the top priority,” Roberts added, “and we have learned a lot in the last year about improving our safety procedures. I appreciate the quick and focused action of Emergency Management and Planning and UNC Police to better our practices, and we will continue to find ways to make our security measures even more effective.”
Tailei Qi, the graduate student suspected in the fatal shooting of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty member, center, makes his first appearance at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough, N.C., Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023. (Photo via AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum.)
The Murder Trial
The murder case against Qi has been effectively halted, as an Orange County judge declared the former grad student mentally unfit to stand trial on the charges, citing behavior akin to schizophrenia. He’s receiving treatment at a hospital in Butner, and District Attorney Jeff Nieman’s office plans to resume the case once Qi is declared fit.
“A specific trial date has not been set,” he told 97.9 The Hill. “The court has ordered Mr. Qi to undergo an evaluation, and the results of that evaluation are still pending.”
Nieman said is a scheduling conference set for December for the defense, prosecutors and judge to discuss any updates in its status.
“I want Mr. Yan’s family and the community to know that even though it appears that nothing is happening,” he said, “there are things going on that, by virtue of the nature of it, can’t be commented on publicly. Sometimes I compare it to the duck on the pond – it looks like the duck is doing nothing (to say afloat), but there’s paddling going underneath the surface. And that’s what’s going on here.”
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