Ex-MIT researcher Qinxuan Pan gets 35 years in jail for killing Yale student Kevin Jiang
- Pan apologised to a courtroom packed with family and friends of the victim, saying he ‘fully accepted’ his punishment
- Jiang, who got engaged just days before his murder, was shot multiple times just after he left his fiancée’s apartment
A former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was sentenced Tuesday to 35 years in prison for the killing of a Yale University graduate student found shot outside his car on a Connecticut street.
Qinxuan Pan, 33, who pleaded guilty to murder in February, apologised during a hearing in a New Haven courtroom packed with family and friends of the victim, Kevin Jiang.
“I feel sorry for what my actions caused and for everyone affected,” Pan said. “I fully accept my penalties.”
Jiang, 26, a US Army veteran who grew up in Chicago and a graduate student at Yale’s School of the Environment, had just left his fiancée’s apartment in New Haven on the evening of February 6, 2021, when he was shot multiple times by Pan, according to police and prosecutors. The couple had just got engaged days earlier.
Several of Jiang’s relatives and friends spoke in court before the judge handed down the sentence, which Pan agreed to as part of his plea bargain.