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Jurors watch FBI video of suspect in Chinese scholar's death

Posted June 14, 2019 7:00 am

The Associated Press

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) - Jurors in the trial of a former University of Illinois doctoral student accused of killing a visiting scholar from China are watching video of the suspect explaining to an FBI agent that the woman looked "panicky" when he spotted her and offered her a ride.

The (Champaign) News-Gazette reports that jurors on Friday watched Brendt Christensen tell an FBI agent that he wasn't in a good mood on the June 2017 day when he spotted 26-year-old Yingying Zhang as he drove near the Champaign-Urbana campus.

Zhang's body has never been found, but prosecutors contend Christensen kidnapped, raped and beat Zhang to death and decapitated her. His trial is in federal court.

Defense attorneys seeking to spare him a possible death sentence have told jurors that he killed Zhang.

FILE - This 2016 selfie provided by her family shows Yingying Zhang in a cap and gown for her graduate degree in environmental engineering from Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. The 26-year-old visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, disappeared June 9, 2017. Brendt Christensen, a former graduate student, has been charged with kidnapping and killing her. Zhang's body has not been found. (Zhang Family Photo via AP, File) The Associated Press

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