Landlord: Tech suspect was 'rude and belligerent'

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BLACKSBURG -- Haiyang Zhu and Xin Yang, two Chinese graduate students at Virginia Tech, were seemingly doing nothing more than enjoying a quiet conversation and a cup of coffee together at a campus café when, abruptly, Zhu pulled a knife.

In the following seconds, the school's police chief said today, Zhu savagely attacked the 22-year-old woman, cutting off her head.

According to an affidavit filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, when Tech police officer Nicole Irvine arrived at the Au Bon Pain café in the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson Brown, she saw Zhu, 25, holding Yang's head in his hand.

Yang, a recent arrival at Tech who was studying accounting, had trusted Zhu enough to list him as an emergency contact on university documents.

Yang, from Beijing, had been a student at Tech for only 13 days. In that brief time since her Jan. 8 arrival, she became the latest victim of bloody violence at the school, which saw 32 people gunned down by a mentally unbalanced student not quite two years earlier.

The slaying last night left Tech officials once again standing before a crowd of reporters, at times today answering questions and at other times admitting they don't have the answers.

"It was a horrific crime scene," campus Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said of the attack.

Zhu, a graduate student from the port city of Ningbo in China who is studying agriculture and applied economics at Tech, has been charged with first-degree murder. Authorities have locked him in a cell in the Montgomery County Jail, without bond.

Today, investigators tried to determine the depth of the relationship between Zhu and Yang and searched for a motive for the attack.

Will Segar, Zhu's landlord at Sturbridge Square Apartments in Blacksburg, painted a picture of a young man who had come to Segar's attention because of his bellicose interaction with those around him.

"He was rude and belligerent," said Segar. Segar said he had to remove the thermostat from Zhu's apartment because the young man and his two roommates refused to turn on the heat, which allowed the pipes to freeze and burst. Segar said he also had to scold Zhu about storing firewood in the middle of his carpeted floor.

"I talked to a Blacksburg police officer about him, I told him he's harassing other people and he's a public nuisance, and he [the officer] said he couldn't do anything and told me to talk to international affairs at Virginia Tech," Segar said. He added that he talked to someone at Tech, but got no useful advice on how to deal with Zhu.

The manager of the Sturbridge Square apartments said she also has had run-ins with Zhu over the past weeks, and she called his recent behavior "very odd, very bizarre."

"Last week he came in and accused the staff of stealing his shoes," said Tonya Spain, property manager at Sturbridge. "I said, 'You have two roommates; are you sure it wasn't one of them?' But he was adamant that staff had stolen his shoes."

Kim Beisecker, director of international students, said she knew both Zhu and Yang. She gave a far different description of Zhu's personality.

"He was always polite and respectful, and she was just a darling young woman," Beisecker said today.

"We had just had orientation with her, and we knew him as a student," she said.

Beisecker describe Zhu as very unlike Seung-Hui Cho, who was responsible for the 2007 Tech massacre. "This was a young man who had friends."

Acquaintances of both the victim and the suspect were coming to Tech's international center today for counseling, Beisecker said.

She described them as in shock, but said, "I think shock is normal in an event like this."

Tech has about 2,100 international students, and the Cranwell International Center offers them support services.

Flinchum said Zhu, prior to yesterday, had never been reported to campus police for any alleged violations of the law.

Today, campus police obtained a warrant to search Zhu's apartment for "any weapons or restraining devices evidencing preparation or premeditation." Investigators also sought evidence of any correspondence between Yang and Zhu.

According to Tech officials, police were alerted to the attack at 7:06 p.m. yesterday, when they received two 911 calls about a female being assaulted in the café.

About one minute later, the first officer arrived. She arrested Zhu. Flinchum said police also recovered a murder weapon, which he described as a kitchen knife.

Interviews with the seven witnesses, Flinchum said, suggested Yang and Zhu were not arguing before the knife came out. Asked whether Zhu said or yelled anything as he held the knife, Flinchum declined to answer, saying investigators are withholding some information.

Yang died near the table where she was attacked. Later that night, officials notified Yang's mother in China of her death.

At a press conference this morning in the Inn at Virginia Tech, university President Charles W. Steger stood before reporters -- as he had many times in the aftermath of the April 16, 2007, massacre -- and expressed his grief.

"I have no doubt that many of us feel especially distraught," Steger said.

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine offered his condolences as well. "My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Xin Yang today -- and with the broader Virginia Tech community," Kaine said in a statement issued this afternoon.

"The tragic attack on campus this week has no doubt revived terrible memories for countless members of the Hokie family. I urge the citizens of the Commonwealth to join me in sending sympathies and support to Virginia Tech in the days and weeks to come."

Across campus today, classes resumed. The Au Bon Pain café was closed, its doors taped shut, but the staff had placed pastries and coffee urns in the lobby of the Graduate Life Center, where 130 graduate students live. Briefly, Yang lived there too.

Many graduate students, when asked about Yang, could not recall ever meeting her. Karen DePauw, vice president and dean for graduate education, said she did not know Zhu or Yang.

"The emotion I feel right now is real sadness for the victim's family and the challenges they will face," she said.

Students, alerted to the attack Wednesday night by e-mail, phone and text messages, said today that the slaying, though grim, had not noticeably altered the mood on campus.

"The teachers weren't really talking about it this morning," said freshman Michelle Flickinger of Burke. "But everybody was talking about it [Wednesday] night."

At the apartment complex where Zhu lives, his neighbors said they never saw him, and they were surprised to learn he is accused of murdering a fellow student.

"Oh my God, that's kind of creepy," said Morgan Nati, a communications major from Hopewell, Pa., who lives across the street from Zhu. "I never see him out there, and I'm out here all day with my dog."

Segar said Zhu showed up in the administrative offices of the apartment complex around Jan. 12 with a young Chinese woman, about 22, who said she had arrived Jan. 8. Zhu was trying to help her get an apartment, Segar said, but the woman refused to provide some required information on the application, so the two left.

Zhu's roommates, identified by Segar as Tech students Ming Yi and Lei Pan, could not be reached for comment. The door of their two-story apartment was locked today. Cigarette butts littered the yard in front of the apartment.

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