Police secure arrest warrant for MIT graduate Qinxuan Pan, US Marshals expand manhunt
Pan was named a person of interest in the murder of Kevin Jiang in February
The New Haven Police Department secured an arrest warrant Feb. 27 charging Qinxuan Pan MNG ’15, an MIT graduate, with murder for the death of Kevin Jiang, a Yale University graduate student.
Police found Jiang, 26, shot dead with multiple gunshot wounds in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, near Yale’s campus Feb. 6. New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said police were dispatched after several 911 calls around 8:30 p.m. reporting gunfire and a person shot in a press conference on Feb. 8. Yale University President Peter Salovey identified Jiang as the victim in a message to the Yale community Feb. 7.
Salovey wrote that Jiang was a graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment. Jiang was an Army veteran and member of the Army National Guard. He had been engaged to a recent MIT graduate.
Reyes said Jiang was operating a vehicle at the time he was shot and that there is “developed information” suggesting that he was targeted.
Police named Pan, 29, a person of interest in the murder Feb. 10, though he was not a suspect at the time. Pan was accused of stealing a car from a car dealership in Mansfield, Massachusetts around 5:30 p.m., a few hours before the Feb. 6 shooting.
Pan remains at large, with the United States Marshals Service expanding the manhunt nationwide March 1 and offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information that could lead to his arrest. Supervisory Deputy of the Agency Matthew Duffy said Pan is believed to be staying in the Atlanta area in Georgia and should be considered “armed and dangerous.”
There were two previous warrants for Pan, one for stealing a vehicle out of Massachusetts and one for the possession of a stolen vehicle in Connecticut, according to Reyes.
In a Feb. 10 email to the MIT community, President L. Rafael Reif announced that “MIT Police are in close contact with the New Haven Police Department and U.S. Marshals service and, based on information from these officials, have no reason to believe that our campus or Greater Boston communities are at risk.”
Pan completed his bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Engineering and Mathematics in 2014 and received a Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2015.