A Yale University graduate student was shot dead Saturday night in the East Rock area of New Haven, the school said.
Police responded to reports of seven shots being fired at the intersection of Lawrence and Nicoll Streets around 8:30 p.m., killing Kevin Jiang, 26, in the middle of the road, New Haven Independent reported.
According to the Independent, police found Jiang’s body in the vicinity of his Prius, which had damage to the back. Police are investigating whether a car accident preceded the killing.
According to the report, Jiang, a student at Yale’s forestry school, lived near his fiancée and mother. He was an active member of Trinity Baptist Church in State Street, where he was remembered on Sunday as “cheerful, energetic” and “joyful.”
According to the LinkedIn page, the victim had previously served a period in the U.S. Army and remained a member of the National Guard at the time of his death.
Yale President Peter Salovey called Jiang “an extraordinary young man.”
“The New Haven Police Department is treating this incident as a homicide and is actively working to apprehend the person or persons responsible,” Salovey said in a statement.
Jiang is the first Yale graduate student to be killed in New Haven since 2009, when police found 24-year-old technical technician Annie Le in a wall in the lab where she worked.
Le’s 44-year-old male co-worker eventually went through the crime, and Yale agreed to pay her family $ 3 million to settle a lawsuit over the fact that the university did not adequately protect the women on campus.