MIT grad, suspected of killing Yale student, arrested in Alabama

U.S. marshals in Alabama on Friday captured an MIT graduate accused of gunning down a Yale University graduate student earlier this yearin Connecticut, officials said.

The U.S. Marshals Service said its Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force, assisted by marshals from the Middle District of Alabama and police in Montgomery, arrested Qinxuan Pan on Friday morning.

The 29-year-old resident of Malden, Massachusetts, had been on the lam since the Feb. 6 slaying of Kevin Jiang, a second-year grad student at the Yale School of the Environment.

Jiang was shot and killed outside his car in New Haven.

Pan was called a "person of interest" in Jiang's slaying before New Haven police announced on Feb. 27 that they'd secured an arrest warrant to charge him with murder.

Authorities previously obtained two arrest warrants for Pan, one for possession of a stolen vehicle in New Haven and another for stealing a vehicle out of Massachusetts.

He had last been seen on Feb. 11 driving with family members in the Atlanta suburb of Brookhaven, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Officials with the agency said they believe he could have been staying with family or friends in metro Atlanta.

Pan received undergraduate degrees from the MIT in computer science and mathematics in June 2014 and has been enrolled as a graduate student in the electrical engineering and computer science department since September 2014, school officials said.

Jiang was engaged to a woman who graduated from MIT in 2020 with a degree in biological engineering.

Details about Jiang's and Pan's relationship have not been released, and it is unclear if the victim's fiancee knew Pan.

It wasn't immediately known Friday if Pan had retained an attorney.

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