University of Utah accused of ignoring woman’s pleas
Student found dead in hotel as ex-boyfriend faces charges; report details school’s many missteps
Zhifan Dong told the University of Utah two days after her ex-boyfriend’s arrest that he had assaulted her.
The 19-year-old freshman and her ex-boyfriend, fellow student Haoyu Wang, had gotten into an argument while at a hotel on Jan. 12, she said. As she was packing her bags, he allegedly turned off the lights and then held down her neck and arms.
“I began to scratch him to get off. He began to hit me,” Dong said, according to a Jan. 14 report written by an employee of the university’s housing office. “I got scared, I quickly packed my stuff, the hotel front desk helped me call the police. That I know of, he was in jail for an hour.”
University policy mandated that the housing staff immediately notify the school police, student conduct staff and Title IX office of possible intimate partner violence. But in an echo of a previous tragedy involving a University of Utah student, those steps would not be taken until Feb. 8 — nearly four weeks later.
By then, it was too late: On Feb. 11, police found Dong’s body in a hotel room, with Wang beside her. He confessed to giving her a fatal dose of heroin and fentanyl, according to an affidavit, as part of what he described as a suicide pact.
Wang, 27, is charged with murder in his ex-girlfriend’s death. His attorney said he has entered a not guilty plea.
The Salt Lake Tribune recently won a court fight to force the university to release the police report in Dong’s death. On Tuesday, the university released more than 100 pages of documents related to the case, showing that employees made crucial missteps in the weeks before Dong’s ex-boyfriend allegedly killed her. Her death echoes the case of Lauren McCluskey, another University of Utah student killed by a former romantic partner who was on the school’s radar.
After McCluskey’s killing in 2018, the university pledged to improve domestic violence training and streamline the school’s response to reported abuse. But records tracing Dong’s last days indicate that university staff waited weeks after she was last seen to escalate the issue to campus police, repeatedly called an out-of-service phone number for Dong’s ex-boyfriend and called another student with a similar name — raising questions about how much the school’s processes have truly improved and how well it supports international students.
The university acknowledged “shortcomings” last week in its response to Dong’s case, including “insufficient and unprofessional” communications and the housing workers’ delay in notifying campus police and other offices. Two housing employees resigned during an internal investigation, and three others were disciplined, school officials said.
“In this case, key details were overlooked and staff failed to make connections with other parts of campus that could have accelerated the university’s ability to gather additional information and respond more urgently,” Lori McDonald, vice president for student affairs, said in a statement. “This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
Brian Stewart, the Dong family’s attorney, said the university’s police force and housing office failed to prevent Dong’s killing despite knowing that Wang had allegedly assaulted her weeks earlier.
“Especially after professing to have learned from Lauren McCluskey’s death,
it is inexcusable that the University continues to make the same mistakes with the same tragic consequences,” Stewart, whose firm also represented McCluskey’s family, said in a statement.
Dong’s parents, Junfang Shen and Mingsheng Dong, said the university had betrayed their trust by failing to keep their daughter safe.
“They knew Zhifan was in serious danger but failed to protect her when she needed it the most,” they said in a statement provided by Stewart.
Among the documents released Tuesday was a timeline of the school’s actions since Dong and Wang, international students from China, were admitted and started dating last fall.
After the Jan. 12 altercation — which left Dong with visible injuries, according to a police report released to the Tribune — city officers brought Wang to jail and released him the same day after he agreed to a temporary restraining order, Salt Lake City police said.
City police did not tell university police about the protective order. No policy or law requires them to do so, Salt Lake City police and the university said. Instead, city police said they list restraining orders in a statewide database that law enforcement officers can search.
The next day, officers who were called to the same hotel hospitalized Wang involuntarily due to a suicide attempt, Salt Lake City police said. Police think Dong made the call for help, but officers found Wang alone and could not determine whether Wang had violated the protective order.
The school first heard about the Jan. 12 altercation two days later, when Dong relayed her concerns about Wang’s suicidal ideation to the university’s housing staff. The pair continued living in the same dormitory building, which the university said is allowed when there is a protective order as long as both people abide by it.
When Dong requested that the housing office conduct a wellness check on Wang, staff responded that they were “unable to do much to help” that night and promised to follow up. They closed the initial report by stating that “no further action was needed.” That action was contrary to their training, which mandated that they report possible intimate partner violence and suicidal ideation to police and other campus officials, the university said in disciplinary letters after Dong’s death.
Over the next few weeks, housing staff repeatedly tried to contact both students by email and phone, though they knew Wang’s number was out of service. On Jan. 31, housing staff called a different Haoyu Wang enrolled in the same international program, who reported that he was fine. Unaware that they had spoken to the wrong student, they did not report Wang missing — even though he had not swiped into his dorm in a week.
In early February, Dong’s suitemate and one of her instructors reported concerns that they had not seen her for a while. On Feb. 8, housing staff filed a missing persons report on Dong, alerting campus police for the first time. Officers quickly discovered the city police force’s report on the Jan. 12 incident and Dong’s protective order, according to the school.
On a video call with university police officers on Feb. 8, Dong appeared to be alone, but refused to tell them where she was, the school says. Officers searched several hotels and spoke with Dong’s mother, who assured them that her daughter would return to campus that week.
Instead, the search ended in tragedy. On Feb. 11 at 3:51 a.m., Wang emailed a housing administrator that he and Dong were still in love and had made a pact to die by suicide together. The administrator saw the email an hour later and called police, who found Dong dead in a local hotel room and arrested Wang.
Wang is being held in jail and is awaiting a competency hearing. His attorney said in a statement Friday, “there are mental health issues concerning everyone involved in this case that will need to be addressed prior to trial and I would conclude with the need for adequate and early mental health assessments and care that could prevent additional tragedies in the future.”
Dong’s death comes less than two years after the university settled with McCluskey’s family for $13.5 million, acknowledging that it mishandled her repeated attempts to get help from university officials. McCluskey, a 21-yearold track and field athlete, told campus police in 2018 she was being harassed and extorted by Melvin Rowland, whom she briefly dated before discovering that he was a registered sex offender, according to a university review.
According to a lawsuit filed by her parents, McCluskey provided a campus officer with explicit photos of herself that Rowland was using to blackmail her; the officer then bragged about the photos downloaded to his personal phone and shared them with a colleague not involved with the case. Days later, Rowland shot and killed McCluskey on campus before killing himself.
In addition to Dong and McCluskey, three other women at the University of Utah have been killed in domestic violence cases, according to the Tribune. Staff member Katherine Peralta was killed by her husband in 2016, medical resident Sarah Hawley was killed by her boyfriend in 2019 and undergraduate Mackenzie Lueck was killed in 2019 by a man she had talked with on a dating app.
Jhumka Gupta, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies intimate partner violence, said Dong’s case illustrates the need for universities to consider how their violence prevention programs support international students, who may already feel more isolated on campus.
“It’s important to also note the mix-up of the names by university personnel — a different Haoyu Wang was contacted by university housing staff at one point, which underscores the critical importance of integrating an intersectional perspective into campus dating violence prevention and intervention,” Gupta said in an email.