Virginia Tech Suspect Served as Victim's Mentor on Campus
At Virginia Tech, newly arrived international students from China are usually paired with other international students who have been at the school at least one semester to help them acclimate to their new environment. Xin Yang arrived on campus Jan. 8 and, university officials said, met her assigned buddy, Haiyang Zhu.</br></br>He spent the next two weeks showing her around campus, officials said, helping her look for a place to live. The two became familiar enough in that short time that Yang listed Zhu as one of two people to contact in case of an emergency.</br></br>Friends and former teachers of Zhu, 25, spent yesterday in shock as investigators continued searching his Blacksburg townhouse, laptop computer, cellphone and other personal items to try to piece together why the promising PhD economics student allegedly cut off the head of the 22-year-old woman he had only recently met.</br></br>Chinese-language Web pages of Zhu's began to surface yesterday, indicating that he had money problems. But university officials cautioned that one site in particular, which displays Zhu's mug shot and talks about him wanting to kill himself or someone else because of losses in the stock market, appears to be a "total fake."</br></br>Still, Will Segar, Zhu's landlord at Blacksburg's Sturbridge Square Apartments, said Zhu acted "strange" and was often "hostile and belligerent." He said Zhu was so concerned about money that he refused to turn the heat on in the three-bedroom townhouse he shared with two roommates. Instead, Segar said, throughout the fall, Zhu gathered sticks and dumped them in the middle of the living room to burn in the fireplace. The apartment had no furniture at the time, Segar said.