Paul Bass Photos
Spots investigators have visited in connection with the murder investigation: Sims Metals (top), Best Western Hotel, Arby’s.
Qinxuan Pan: Considered armed and dangerous.
“Soon after” Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang was shot dead in New Haven’s Goatville neighborhood, North Haven police encountered MIT researcher Qinxuan Pan — and they let him go.
Now a nationwide manhunt is on to find Pan, who is wanted for questioning in the murder.
New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes revealed that information Wednesday at a 5 p.m. press conference on the front steps of police department headquarters at 1 Union Ave.
Reyes said authorities are looking for Pan to question him about Jiang’s murder. He said Pan is at large out of state, and considered armed and dangerous.
He is a “person of interest” in the case, not officially a “suspect,” Reyes said. “We are not prepared to identify him as the shooter.”
Thomas Breen photo
Chief Reyes at Wednesday’s presser.
He asked anyone with information on his whereabouts to contact New Haven detectives at 203 946‑6304.
“Extreme caution should be used if you come into contact with this individual,” Reyes said. “We believe that he is outside of the state.”
The chief offered the update as rumors have swirled in town about the murder. He made clear that police believe that was not a random act that involved a local perpetrator or reflected a broader danger to the New Haven public.
He was accompanied at the press conference by representatives of the FBI, State’s Attorney’s Office, and Yale Police Department, which are all involved in the investigation.
The murder took place at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night Feb. 6 on Lawrence Street between Nash and Nicoll.
Kevin Jiang and Zion Perry on the day of their engagement last month.
Prior to the killing, Kevin Jiang, a 26-year-old graduate student at Yale’s forestry school, had left the apartment of Zion Perry, a Yale graduate student. (He lived with his mother in West Haven.) Jiang and Perry became engaged a week earlier. They had met and started dating a year earlier than that, when Perry was still an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Qinxuan Pan is a researcher in computer science and artificial intelligence.
Out on Lawrence Street, someone shot Jiang multiple times at close range, then fled. Police believe Pan “was in the vicinity” at the time of the shooting.
A collision occurred before the shooting; Jiang’s car had been damaged.
“Soon after” the shooting, according to Reyes, North Haven police were called about a suspicious vehicle and man by railroad train tracks. The man was acting oddly.
That man was Pan.
Police arrived and questioned him. They subsequently left him at Best Western Hotel.
Pan subsequently fled. Now federal, state and local police are searching for him nationwide.
It turned out that the vehicle he was driving had been stolen out of Massachusetts.
North Haven Police Chief Kevin Glenn, whom the department said serves as its public information officer, could not be reached for comment.
Police have a warrant for Pan’s arrest for possession of a stolen vehicle. If Pan is captured, his bond would be set at $300,000 and he would face extradition to New Haven.
The New Haven police department’s homicide unit has been working the case intensely since the murder, as it does as a team in the initial days after a homicide, when leads are freshest.
“We are exploring the information” gained “in that North Haven “encounter,” as well as other information obtained since that night, Reyes said.
Pan, a PhD student, is a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). It is billed as “one of the world’s most important centers of computer science and information technology research.”
A native of Shanghai, Pan is the co-owner of a house in Malden, Mass. valued at $667,400, according to that city’s assessor’s database. He has been on a team at MIT working on a project called “Omniscope.” Pan is also an accomplished pianist.
New Haven and North Haven police in recent days have returned to the spot where Pan was last seen in that town, checking out the Best Western, the Arby’s next door, and a scrap metal yard on Universal Drive.
From the “About Us” section on the North Haven police website.
Note: An earlier version of this story inaccurately used the word “in custody” for the encounter between North Haven police and Qinxuan Pan. North Haven police never arrested or took Mr. Pan into custody.