US student Brendt Christensen, accused of killing Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying, claims he was denied care when seeking help for homicidal thoughts
- Suspect says he told university counsellors he was ‘ruminating’ about how to commit murder and ‘get away with it’
- He even bought items as part of plans to kill someone and dispose of a body but later returned them
Lawyers for a former University of Illinois student accused of killing Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying say university counsellors did not offer him adequate care when he sought help for suicidal and homicidal thoughts three months before the 26-year-old Zhang went missing.
Brendt Christensen, now 29, walked into a campus counselling Centre on March 21, 2017, saying he had recurring thoughts of committing murder, “ruminating about how one might go about killing a person and ‘get away with it’,” according to defence filings unsealed this week. The physics student said he even bought items as part of plans to kill someone and dispose of a body but later returned them.
Defence lawyers want a Peoria-based federal judge to allow clinical psychologist Susan Zoline to tell jurors that “the treatment of Mr Christensen … did not comply with the applicable standards of care”, the filing says. Prosecutors want the judge to bar Zoline from testifying, saying those claims would be inaccurate and irrelevant, as well as confusing to jurors. The trial is set to begin on June 3.
The Champaign-based school said in a statement on Tuesday that it cannot comment on treatment for individual students. However, it said staff members at the University of Illinois Counselling Centre “are trained to provide care … consistent with the best practices in mental health care nationally”.
Prosecutors argue in their filing that there is no indication counsellors were remiss in treating Christensen, noting he “described his urge to commit homicide as a fantasy, and repeatedly downplayed that fantasy”. He never threatened Zhang or anyone else by name.