An Orange County judge ruled Friday that a former graduate student charged with shooting and killing a UNC-Chapel Hill professor in 2023 was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Tailei Qi faced a first-degree murder charge for the fatal shooting of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences at UNC. The judge ruled that Tailei Qi did not understand the wrongfulness of his actions.
Orange County District Attorney Jeff Nieman says experts with the prosecution and defense say they found that Qi suffered from mental delusions and ultimately believed he was acting in self defense for himself and someone else that may not exist. Just a few months after the shooting, Qi had been deemed unfit for trial.
Experts also conducted a malingering test to prove his credibility. Qi will be housed at Central Regional Hospital in Butner indefinitely.
The shooting, which took place at Caudill Labs, caused the campus to go under lockdown for three hours. The incident created widespread panic among students, faculty and other staff on campus. In the months after the shooting, campus police took measures to change how it responds to threatening incidents.
The killing of Zijie Yan also impacted Chinese diaspora residents and Asian Americans in the wider community, who mourned the professor's death. A group of undergraduate students also were motivated to start a peer counseling effort to address mental health needs for Chinese students on campus.
Digital News Producer Eli Chen contributed to this story.
