A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate has been named a “person of interest” in the fatal shooting of a Yale University student, Connecticut authorities said.
Kevin Jiang, 26, a second-year graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment, was shot and killed outside his car in New Haven Saturday night, according to police. He was expected to graduate next year, police said.
New Haven police Chief Otoniel Reyes said during a press conference Wednesday that Qinxuan Pan, 29, of Malden, Massachusetts, should be considered “armed and dangerous” and the public should use “extreme caution” around him.
Reyes said Pan was last seen with a stolen vehicle from Massachusetts at the Best Western hotel in North Haven on the night of Jiang’s death.
Police secured two arrest warrants for Pan, one for the possession of a stolen vehicle in North Haven and another for stealing a vehicle out of Massachusetts, Reyes said.
Reyes did not name Pan as a suspect in the homicide case or comment on whether the two had an existing relationship.
A spokesperson for MIT told NBC News in an email that Pan received undergraduate degrees from the university in computer science and mathematics in June 2014 and has been enrolled as a graduate student in the electrical engineering and computer science department since September 2014.
Jiang’s fiancee graduated with a degree in biological engineering from MIT in 2020.
Efforts to reach relatives of Pan and Jiang by phone were unsuccessful Thursday.
Jiang’s death was the sixth homicide in New Haven in 2021.
Reyes added that police did not feel that Pan was a “prevailing threat” to the community at this time.
“We’re hoping to be able to bring the person responsible for this incident, for the homicide, this senseless crime, to justice very soon,” he said.
