Court documents say Yale grad student was shot multiple times at close range

By Kaitlyn Naples, Courtney Zieller

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    NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (WFSB) — An arrest warrant for a man accused in the murder of a Yale graduate student was released on Friday.

After a months-long manhunt, 30-year-old Qinxuan Pan was captured in Alabama and extradited back to New Haven last month.

He’s accused of killing Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang in New Haven back in February.

The arrest warrant said Jiang was found having been shot in the face. He had gunshot wounds on other parts of his body as well. The warrant also said it appeared he had been shot at close range.

The warrant, almost 100 pages, also said Jiang’s car was struck by another vehicle, believed to have been driven by Pan, prior to the shooting.

Pan was driving a black GMC Terrain.

Jiang was a grad student and an Army veteran. He recently became engaged before his death, and police said Pan knew Jiang’s fiancé from their time as students at MIT.

After Jiang’s death, Pan was named a person of interest. Then, police issued an arrest warrant that charged him with murder.

About 30 minutes after the shooting on the night of Feb. 6, Pan was approached by an officer in North Haven after the car he was driving got stuck on railroad tracks at Sims Metal Management on Universal Drive.

An employee had reported a suspicious vehicle on the property.

He told the officer that “he accidentally drove onto the train tracks and the vehicle was stuck. Pan stated he took a wrong turn or missed the highway entrance as he was trying to get to Massachusetts.”

The license plate on the vehicle had been reported as being lost or misused out of the Newington Police Department.

The warrant said Pan told the officer the vehicle was a rental, but he couldn’t show any paperwork. The VIN on the vehicle came back to a GMC Terrain registered out of Massachusetts.

The car was then towed, and Pan was driven by the tow truck driver to a nearby Best Western where he had checked into a room.

Investigators later found blood-like stains on items inside the GMC, and on the gear shifter DNA revealed it’s “at least 100 billion times more likely to occur if it originated from Kevin Jiang,” the warrant said.

When police checked the room the next day, it appeared as though nobody had stayed in it.

The day after the shooting, police were called to the Arby’s on Washington Avenue in North Haven, located next to the Best Western, after an employee found a bag containing a gun and ammunition. The warrant said the bag resembled one that had been seen in the SUV being driven by Pan.

“The handgun was identified as a Ruger SR1911 semi-automatic silver pistol with wood grips along with numerous magazines and boxes of ammunition. Also located in the bag was a small leather type brief case and a blue plastic retail type of bag with a Massachusetts logo on it,” the warrant said.

Inside the bag police found clothing items, three license plates, a dealership plate cover and a pair of scissors. Officers believed that these items belonged to Pan.

That’s when he was named a person of interest in the homicide, and a months-long search for Pan began, spanning several states.

In May, Pan was picked up by U.S. marshals in Alabama.

He was found in an apartment he was renting under a fake name in Montgomery, AL.

Pan faced a judge earlier this month, where his $20 million bond was kept in place, as he is considered a flight risk.

The arrest warrant said Malden, MA police reported having been to Pan’s address numerous times for mental health issues.

During an interview with Jiang’s fiance, the warrant said she told police that she knew Pan, but they never had a romantic relationship, saying they were just friends.

She told police “she did get a feeling that he was interested in her during that time.”

The two were friends on Facebook.

A week before Jiang was killed, the couple announced their engagement and posted pictures on social media.

Pan last contacted Jiang’s fiancé through Facebook last May when she graduated from MIT.

“Pan contacted her to congratulate her, and asked her if she would be able to have a zoom call, which never occurred,” the warrant said.

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