(Reuters) – Federal agents in Alabama on Friday arrested a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student accused of killing a Yale University student in February, ending a months-long nationwide hunt, local media reported.
The U.S. Marshals Service said it took Qinxuan Pan into custody in Alabama, an ABC news affiliate in New Haven, Connecticut reported.
Pan was wanted in the Feb. 6 killing of Kevin Jiang, a 26-year-old graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment, located in New Haven, about 80 miles (129 km) northeast of New York City.
Jiang was shot to death outside his car, a murder that rattled the prestigious Ivy League school’s campus.
On March 1, U.S. Marshals began a nationwide hunt for Pan, offering $10,000 for information leading to his arrest.
At the time, the agency said Pan was last seen in the early morning hours on Feb. 11 driving with family members in Brookhaven or Duluth, Georgia.
The U.S. Marshals Service was unavailable for comment on Friday.
Pan was enrolled in the electrical engineering and computer science department at MIT, itself an elite school not far from the suspect’s last known address in Malden, Massachusetts.
Police have not disclosed a suspected motive in the killing.
The murder took place near the apartment of Jiang’s fiancee, Zion Perry, also a Yale graduate student, the New Haven Independent reported on Feb. 11.
Perry and Pan had crossed paths at MIT, where she earned her undergraduate degree, according to the newspaper, which published a photo of the two at a social gathering in March 2020.
There was no evidence to suggest Perry and Pan had a romantic relationship, the Independent said.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
