Suspect pleads not guilty in Yale graduate student’s killing
NEW HAVEN — Almost two years after Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang was fatally shot last year, a Massachusetts man suspected of pulling the trigger pleaded not guilty Thursday, court records show.
Qinxuan Pan’s plea came two days after Judge Jon Alander determined there was probable cause for the murder and second-degree larceny charges filed against him in 2021.
Pan, 31, is scheduled to appear for a hearing on Feb. 27 in state Superior Court in New Haven.
On Feb. 6, 2021, Jiang, 26, was shot in the face multiple times on Lawrence Street in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood. Jiang, who was attending Yale University to get his master’s degree in environmental science, had just left his fiancee’s apartment before he was killed.
Pan stole a GMC Terrain, changed his cellphone number and drove to Connecticut that same day, according to his arrest warrant. North Haven police stopped Pan that evening as he was stuck on railroad tracks, but officers let him go since they received a different description of the shooting suspect, the warrant stated.
Police later searched the GMC Terrain for evidence and found a reddish-brown stain on the gear shifter, the warrant stated. This stain was found to be “100 billion times more likely” to have originated from Jiang and an unknown party than two unknown parties, according to Pan’s arrest warrant.
After a months-long manhunt, Pan was apprehended in Alabama in May 2021.
Pan’s probable cause hearing on Tuesday came after months of delays, including a competency exam that found he could stand trial.
On Wednesday, a separate judge denied Pan’s request for a 10 percent bail option, court records show. The state Supreme Court ruled last month that a lower-court judge could consider a bailmodification procedure for Pan, who remains held on a $20 million bond.
At the time of his arrest, a state prosecutor asked for Pan’s bond to be raised to $50 million, stating he was a flight risk with monetary resources. Pan was apprehended months after the crime in Montgomery, Ala., where he was renting an apartment under a false name. He had about $19,000 in cash, seven cellphones, a computer and his father’s Chinese passport at the time.