Student held after USC prof is fatally stabbed on campus
LOS ANGELES — A graduate student arrested on suspicion of stabbing to death the professor who oversaw his work at the University of Southern California was being held on $1 million bail Saturday as their shocked colleagues began processing the news
David Jonathan Brown, a 28-year-old brain and cognitive science student, was arrested in the Friday afternoon attack in the heart of the Los Angeles campus. His mentor, Bosco Tjan, was killed inside the Seeley G. Mudd building, where he runs an intensive lab that studies vision loss.
Brown, one of just five students who worked in the lab, was arrested with- out incident almost immediately afterward, police said, adding that the killing was targeted. In a biography page about the lab and the students involved in it, Brown’s is the only one without a detailed description or photograph.
Nathaniel Kwok, who recently finished working 18 months in the lab, said graduate students like Brown work in the lab 40 to 60 hours a week and develop their own projects that are required in order to graduate.
Brown had been working in the lab since around 2013, but he took a leave of absence for personal reasons sometime last year that lasted roughly a semester, Kwok said.
“He seemed normal for the most part. He was a little on the reserved side, but he was nice. He was friendly,” Kwok said from New York, where he’s now in medical school. “There was nothing that ever would have given me some kind of indicator that he would be harboring any kind of sentiment like this.”
In a letter addressed to the USC community, university President C. L. Max Nikias called Tjan’s killing a tragedy.
“As the Trojan family mourns Professor Tjan’s untimely passing, we will keep his family in our thoughts,” Nikias said.