Two graduate students are killed in the middle of the night only a quarter-mile from campus. Patrick Healy reports.
Two University of Southern California graduate students from China were shot to death in a car overnight in what could be a bungled carjacking, Los Angeles police reported Wednesday.
The victims, a male and a female, were shot around 1 a.m. local time on a residential street about a mile from campus.
USC later identified the victims as electrical engineering grad students Ying Wu and Ming Qu.
Police were interviewing neighbors and searching the area on Wednesday.
A Los Angeles police spokesman said a witness saw a man running from the scene, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP - Getty Images
One of the Chinese students shot dead in Los Angeles had run to this home for help.
The male victim was able to stumble onto a nearby porch before collapsing, while the woman was found slumped over inside the vehicle, a late-model BMW, the Los Angeles Times reported.
USC campus police sent out two alerts about a deadly off-campus shooting -- one at 6:03 a.m. that reported a shooting, and a second 21 minutes later that stated that a male and female had been shot dead.
The campus was not locked down, though the second alert advised students "to be mindful of their surroundings and review safety tips" on a USC website page.
USC says 7,200 of its 38,000 undergrad and graduate students in 2011 were international, and that the largest group was from China.
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Because of the different racial backgrounds, something like this will never be given the huge publicity that the Florida case has gotten.
Such a pointless killing... May they rest in peace. My heart goes out to their families.
But... but... how could this happen in California? Don't they have the answer to gun violence via their very strict gun control laws?
Thanks for your point of view, redneck. You're drooling on the keyboard.
Please post when they know who the shooter is but decide not to charge him. (until today after the public display).
Why are we educating the future leaders of our economic enemy ?
Because their are foreign students at UCLA grad school, 7200 US Citizens could not get in.
It is long past time to stop giving student visas.
@dirp I like your thinking keep it up.
!.5
With a question like yours...it is obvious that you would never have the brains to get into USC.
@pishaw
What an inelegant display of ignorance. How profoundly baffling of you to presume to have the capacity to determine my race, education level, location, job skills and political leanings from a single statement made on a web-based news site and to sum up your perception of my demographic in a single, prejudicial (racist?) mischaracterization: "Redneck."
I'll have you know that my neck is no redder than any typical clerk with distinguished university honors, a degree in English literature, a minor in religious studies and an ongoing fascination with art, politics, history and music.
But go right ahead, wow us with your singularly impeccable display of "psychic" talent and professional psychological assessments. You, sir, are a master of internet sociology. I bow to your wisdom and grovel before your mystic power, sir. Bravo and hallelujah... a liberal is here to bear their opinion.
Signed-- an independent.
You can bet your damn ass if this carjacker tried to get my car , or even a penny in my pocket I WOULD STAND MY GROUND !!! I say NO to the LIBERALS and the LIBERAL press who try to make a good law sound wrong !!!! This country should stand by people who will not cower or run as some say you must do !!! Just sick of the yellow journalism and hand wringing LIBERALS trying to force their hand wringing ways on the American people !!!
The point is, because they were Chinese no one immediately assumes it was for racial motives, and Jesse and Al don't show their face for them. If the shooter was Black, the media won't start spewing anti-black racial hate like they did without knowing facts. IF the shooter was black then they start thei assuming
Dirp, college like USC and the University of Chicago love Chinese students. They or their government pay full price and in cash without student loans etc.
Sounds like a hate crime. Black on yellow.
Where's Eric Holder when you need him?
Being tortured by US government since 1996 by NSA and DAPHA who is experimenting me with mind control and physical torture with non lethal weapons. I have been in hospital 5 times and live in fort lauderdale florida please help Kevin Tarr 47 American - Flight 800 was blown up over Long Island by NSA that night on TBS was James Bond Series....Tortured since 1996 and not paid one penny.
This is why you should get a gun and keep it in your car if you have the permit. Oh wait, I forgot that we're talking about California....
And Devil's Son: The Chinese government doesn't pay as much as you think. Most of the Chinese kids that are going to school here are paid by their parents, and these damn parents are corrupted and rich as hell, a few may have jobs.
Thank god those students weren't armed. then we might be hearing about the tragic shooting of a murder.
Nobody is going to view this minority killing as anything very important because of the color of the minority. We should be demanding to know who the shooters are and demanding justice. Two totally innocent people, not bothering anyone, killed for their car? If that is the case, this is worse than the Florida case.
There is a huge difference. This incident was about crime, pure and simple. Carjackings occur and innocent people get killed. Race may or may not be part of it at all.. I doubt the murderous thieves said, let's target the students because they're Asian. More likely, they were targeted because they looked wealthy and drove an expensive car (which is the case for many students - foreign and domestic - at expensive private universities like USC). The FL case, on the other hand, clearly has a racial component, although whether that component will turn out to be the determinative one is up to the courts now.
Southern California is dangerous especially in LA 8( just check out the homicide report in the LA TIMES 8(
This type of stuff happens all the time.
RIP
Some people just don't get it... they'll never get it. The outrage in the Florida case was about the lack of prosecution, not the crime itself.
There are lots of international students in most of our good universities. They bring diversity which is something good and not something evil! I think of some of the posters on this form would actually "visit" other countries, they might not harbor so much hatred and resentment toward all foreigners. I have travelled through many parts of the world and lived in Asia for 9 years... the Chinese people are good people. Not once in my 9 years of living over there did I ever feel threatened or feel fear. That's a lot more than can be said for my own country! I didn't say the Chinese government was good but I did say the Chinese "people" are lovely... they do not like confrontation. I always felt welcome in China during my multiple visits there.
I am so sorry these young people lost their lives... they were obviously very intelligent and hard working young people to be in this school and at the stage they were in with their education. The Chinese, for the most part, study very hard throughout school and education is very important in their culture. We could also use some of that in this country!
During my entire life, the only place in the world I felt completely safe was in Asia! I would walk anywhere, any time of the day or night, and feel very comfortable doing so. Many Asians think everyone in this country walks around with a gun on their hips ready to shoot you and that shootings take place anywhere and everywhere. I'm beginning to understand why they think that! I'm sure the parents of these two young people are devastated and my heart goes out to them.
The government does not pay for their tuition; their families scrimp and save to send their kids to college. Education is of paramount importance to them. They see it as an investment in their very own futures; in their culture, the elderly are not sent to nursing homes as we tend to do in this country. There will be multiple generations living in one home and taking care of the elderly in the same home.
I am a USC Alumni (2007). The university is close to downtown and is very unsafe area. The university provides all kinds of means of communication for students and asks them to refrain from roaming around in dark. But still, these incidents used to happen once in a while.
Its sad to see a fellow trojan being attacked, but what's more sad is that LAPD does not seem to do a lot to stop the crime. There is only so much a university can do. It is govt. who should take measures to reduce the crime rate in the area. This is mostly due to illegal immigrants in the area, who do not have any job/SSN and their only means of income is either an illegal job or stealing people. :(
this is so sad, i hope they find out who did it. i sure this is a lose for USC. May their family be blessed. If you have trouble will illegal in your area just keep calling fed ALL the time to report and maybe they will get tired and do something about it. Anytime you see them break the law report them, illegal breaking the law will be deport sooner or latter.
Police in this country just sit around and pick their nose, waiting to make reports on crime.
The university already collected these student's tuition, and that is what is REALLY important to them. That is why the foreign students are here....$$$$. These foreign kids have no idea what violence really means till they get here to the U.S..
sJ You walk around watching the police picking there noses? The police in this country have pretty much a non-involvement attitude until they are called upon or witness a crime and then they do their job-law enforcement. They have tried crime prevention and have been called a multitude of names up to and including Nazis. You should give the job a try sometime. No I am not a cop.
I discouraged my kids from going there. It's in a ghetto and is an academic oasis just a block away from very dangerous neighborhoods. It has a great reputation, but you have to consider what could happen if your kid wanders into a bad area or has car trouble sometime.
Some of the nasty comments about why the college would be educating foreign students are astounding. These students pay to come here.
The reason it is not like the Trayvon Martin (the little incident in Florida) is because while you sit and complain, someone set out to do something about it. They took to the blogs to make sure others knew of it. They passed petitions and sign them online to get this reviewed. Don't complain about how much news coverage it got because many people worked hard to get that information out there.
I say that to say this, stop complaining about it and do something. Instead of spending you time complaining do something, start an online petition. Do something instead of being condescending against those that did stand up for something. People who don't stand up for anything or anyone should not be surprised when no ones stands up for them. So stand up for them and I am sure it will come back to you.
Esprit De Corps
Starting an online petition is not "doing something" any more than the people you 'friend' on Facebook are actually your friends.
One of these days, whites will wake up and see how they are the demonized majority in this nation and the the laws are skewed against them. They carry the tax burden, keep a civilized society and are by far the most tolerant of the races between whites and blacks. White support sky-high black government dependency and crime. One day whites will start to have a racial consciousness and say that enough is enough. This government is racist against whites. Fortunately, there's no doubt that white people are waking up to this crap.
Um. And this absurdly racist comment is remotely relevant to this article in what way? The victims were neither white nor black in this case and no race is given for the alleged perpetrators. It maybe that no whites were involved at all.
This was an apparent carjacking. The victims were apparently innocent foreign students from Asia innocuously driving in their car in the bad neighborhood in which their prestigious university has the misfortune of being located. Revenues from wealthy foreign students - who generally pay full cash tuition - are key to keeping our universities afloat financially. No specifics were given on the assailants, although it is probably unlikely that they were also foreign students from Asia. They will likely turn out to be either Black, Latino or White Americans.
Bet if it had been white shooters they would have printed that..but no race was given..
um.. how about the possibility that no race for the killers is given because the victims (and perhaps only known witnesses at this point in the investigation) are dead and the police are still looking for suspects who absconded?...
btw, I was shot at in that neighborhood, near the California Museum of Science and Industry, about 15 years ago. I was in the car behind one that was getting carjacked, at a parking lot intersection behind the museum, leaving a charity event there, at about midnight. That neighborhood is awful.
You say that neighborhood it terrible.....why is that? Is it full of white people?
Bill, mainly black and Latino gang members, plus mainly white drug dealers, druggies. whinos and homeless people if I recollect correctly. I haven't been there in a decade and a half, but to my recollection the human trash there was multi-hued.
i think that if you have never been to the area surrounding usc and seen what it's like u should just keep quiet.
CaliforniaFirst Homeless people are trash? In that case I hope you are the next one in the soup line...I really do! With that attitude who are you to be judging anyone else's biases like you have here. At least those you have criticized are honest about it.
That was not my intention. My comment on the cmsi area is that a lot of the people who hung out there seemed to be visibly involved in seedy activities, including many of the homeless there (as well as the other categories of people there). No, I was not talking about the working homeless or those in the shelter system. I was talking about those living in that particular park by the SC campus.
What we need here are a few more guns. Foreign students should be required to have a few guns and lots of ammo before they are admitted to our universities. These people have to learn that you have to be able to protect yourself in the wild, wild west. What were they thinking sitting unarmed in a car out in public? Do people from other countries think that the US is a civilized country or something? Hell no. We have guns. Lots and lots of guns and we love them and we love to shoot them. And when the NRA takes over, third graders will all have guns and be ready to shoot anybody that pulls their pigtails. They have to start early learning how to defend themselves and how to kill the bad guys. There are bad guys everywhere, of course. They all have guns now too, but don't blame the NRA for that. They tried to warn us. It isn't their fault that the bad guys found ways to get guns from the good guys. They were just trying to make a profit. You know, the free market. Or, is it possibly their fault after all? The ACLU doesn't sell guns and promote fear and paranoia, does it?
No, no. Have to meet certain legal requirments to have a gun man. If someone does not they break the law to carry them. And THAT is why I carry one. Pehaps it does not make sense to some one that does not get that but IF I ever have to use it, it will make very good sense. And who knows, perhaps the peson that does not get that just might be one of the lives I MIGHT have to save. If it has to be explained it probably will not be understood, like they say.
No description of the perpetrator, only that he is a male? I hope there is more information out there because such a senseless murder of two people headed for the betterment of society cannot be tolerated.
Perpetrator was a black dude in a hoodie
The official report contains information that the car in question is a $60k BMW. If true, then it would make sense that a carjacker would target a car like this. USC is located in a high crime area in Los Angeles. My son played baseball for UCLA, we attended many games when the Bruins played USC at Dedeaux field, three consecutive times our car was broken into at USC, all in broad daylight. That is not an area of Los Angeles I would take any car of value, especially at night.
Good point, but given how wealthy many USC students are, there was no shortage of student-driven luxury cars in USC parking lots and garages, to my recollection. When we were undergrads, a friend of mine who attended USC, with show business connections got a top of the line Benz for his 20th birthday (I went to the other university across town, but had many SC friends). It was stolen within 4 weeks.
CalFirst,
I always thought that parking an expensive vehicle at USC was akin to chumming in shark infested waters.
CaliforniaFirst You are the one that called homeless people trash. Are you critiquing the wealthy now? Just curious.
Here's the issue: There are huge sections of California that it's as dangerous to be there at night, as it would be in Iraq. The gangs, and the "wanna-bees" are in charge. The problem is: If you don't know which sections of town are dangerous, you put yourself in jeopardy. Some foreign Nationals (or even out-of-staters) don't understand that there are numerous locations in California that are not safe, or how brutal some of our citizens really are.
This should not be a racial issue. The issue is: "Why can't we protect our innocent civilians? We spent a trillion $$ to help the people in Iraq, and there are many saying we should start protecting the people in Syria. When are we going to clean-up the trash in our own nation?"
Black 6' teen attacks Zimmerman and the world jumps him for racism He defends himself and the world tells each other he shot an Innocent boy buying candy. It is the latest case of reverse racism going around every time there is a black vrs white incident . Why have a trial just turn him over to the Black Panthers , They already found him guilty like the family and everyone else in the media . This Guy can Never get a fair hearing , Hes Guilty in the Media and everyone thinks they know it , So He is virtually Screwed . A 6' Teen age Punk is not a BOY He can and is a Man and would probably fight and attack anyone calling him a BOY in the first place ...Zimmerman knows his chance at anything resembling a fair hearing or Trial is absolutely gone the MEDIA has already tried and convected him on the advice of the Black community...It is not a raciest remark It is all over the News and Media ...Listen,see,and know for yourself....New Black Panthers .....?? Frank Blackstone
Why assume he's "virtually screwed?" There are plenty of folks like yourself out there ready to plaster angel wings on his back and venerate him as the patron saint of firearms. With the polarized opinions this case has created, he is very likely to get one of your ilk on his jury, convinced he is innocence incarnate no matter what the evidence might say. It will be a hung jury at least once, I can almost guarantee that even now. You are absolutely no better than those calling for his head. You are just as sure you know what happened as they are -- and you are just as unreasonable and despicable.
But none of that -- NONE -- has one ounce of anything to do with the tragedy at hand. Give it a rest or go to the appropriate comments section.
By the way, "convected"? Is that what it's called when you cook a roast in a convection oven?
I have family and friends down there in the city of compton and said it was a negro and latino that tried to jack them.
This should not be racial, the same way the matin case ain't racial only because of AL, Jesse and the black panthers.
USC is in the worst neighborhood imaginable in LA area. As a father with now grown children when the subject came up about USC I just said No, I wouldn't help with that school. Colorado University was the first choice and University of SF the second and that's where they graduated from. I could never understand any parent allowing their kids to attend that school.
What they need to do is just bulldoze that dump and push out the gangsters. eminent domain these blocks 8)
was it the Zim Mister???
i knew he killed the young man out of rage. i hope he gets the firing squad. an eye for an eye, yes an eye for an eye! and the family should be able to sue for their great lost.
No you do not KNOW that You, like everyone else in this country, are guessing based on your own biases. And therefore judging and condemning based on your own biases. This has to go to court with the evidence and then we will get "some idea" of what went on. Even then we will not KNOW for sure because there are no eyewitnesses to the crime it-self other than Zimmerman and his testimony is to say the least, biased.
#18 & 18.1
Wrong page people.
what is this the wild wild west, shoot first, lie later. the cops are to blame big time here. lets make a fair fight and arm everyone from 12yrs and up. thats a fair fight!
I wonder who has been running this Country & the World into the ground since 1914? The Nazi War Criminals and their related Crooks that are here? Remember them? Well we already know the answer of who their desendants are huh, so look in the mirror for once and you will see the real threat to society.
The REAL threat to human society can not be seen in a mirror. "Monsters are real, they live inside of us. And sometimes they win." Stephen King. Can not see fear, hate, ignorence, and prejudice. Just their effects. And THOSE are the REAL enemies.
LOL, ROFLMAO. The only way this case will make national news and the creation of a media frenzy is if the shooter is white.
Me personally I could care less what color you are when you try to attack me or my family in friends, I will stop the action very quickly. If you die in the process, so what.
With that said, it will be interesting to find out what the race, color and creed are of the perpetrators is.
The liberal media will not report the facts, the fact don't sell.
Where are Jesse and Al? Shouldn't they and their minions be in CA comforting the family's of the two murdered Chinese students? I think their actions just redefined "people of color," to "black African-American." Bet the carjackers were person(s) of color.
RI MOM
fyi-it doesn't take brains to get into 'SC, only $$$
would anyone want to bet the shooters where black? why the liberal black media on this it probally will not even be on the TV news