It was a cold night in February 2021 when Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang was killed in New Haven after a minor collision. Investigators would later learn that what looked at first like a possible road-rage shooting was the culmination of a calculated plan that linked Jiang’s death to a series of earlier .45-caliber shootings and to a suspect with ties to MIT.
The killing
On February 6, 2021, at about 8:30 p.m., residents in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood reported gunfire. Detectives found 26-year-old Kevin Jiang lying in the street; he had been shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene. His Prius sat with its hazards on and showed slight rear damage consistent with being struck. Witnesses reported a dark-colored SUV pulling up behind Jiang’s car and then reversing before Jiang exited his vehicle to approach the other driver. Surveillance video captured the collision, Jiang getting out, two shots and a scream, followed by six more shots as someone stood over the downed victim. Witnesses also described seeing an all-black-clad figure standing over Jiang and firing, and several callers reported a dark SUV fleeing the scene.
A local crime pattern
Detectives recognized details that tied the homicide to other incidents in the area: four shootings over a few months in which .45-caliber shell casings were found, and in at least two of those cases witnesses reported a dark-colored SUV. In two earlier episodes someone had fired rounds into occupied family homes; no one was injured, but the same caliber casings were recovered. For investigators, the matching casings suggested the shootings were connected; Jiang, however, was the only person killed among those incidents.
Kevin Jiang
Jiang was a 26-year-old Yale School of the Environment student originally from Chicago. He served in the Army National Guard and was deeply religious. He had recently bought a house and invited his mother, Linda Liu, to live with him. Friends described him as warm and genuine; he had posted about getting engaged to his girlfriend, Zion Perry, just a week before he was killed.
Initial investigation and the break
Detectives David Zaweski and Steven Cunningham canvassed the scene, collected shell casings and sought witnesses. The surveillance video became a key piece of evidence, corroborating witness accounts of the SUV, the exchange at the collision, and the subsequent shooting. With the video and casings linking Jiang’s murder to the earlier .45-caliber incidents, investigators expanded their search for a suspect and a dark SUV seen in several of the events.
Fifteen hours after the shooting, police in nearby North Haven received an unrelated call from a scrap metal yard regarding a vehicle stuck on snow-covered railroad tracks. Officers found a black minivan/SUV stuck on the tracks; the driver, later identified as 29-year-old Qinxuan Pan, said he had gotten stuck after taking a wrong turn. Sergeant Jeffrey Mills noted items in the car: a yellow jacket, a blue bag and a briefcase. Pan’s driver’s license and background check were clean, and at the time Mills had not heard of the New Haven homicide.
That night and the next morning, more evidence emerged. Employees at a nearby Arby’s found bags on the grass containing a .45-caliber handgun and boxes of ammunition. One of the bags matched the type and logos of bags found in Pan’s vehicle the previous night. When Mills learned about Jiang’s murder and that .45-caliber casings had been recovered, he alerted New Haven homicide detectives. The gun recovered at the Arby’s turned out not to be the murder weapon, but it was linked to Pan and to the casings.
Linking Pan
Detectives traced Pan to Malden, Massachusetts, where he lived with his parents and was a graduate student at MIT studying computer science and artificial intelligence. Investigators found Pan had three active phones and had used one to contact car dealerships and arrange test drives in the months just before the shootings. Those test drives coincided with the dates of the .45-caliber shootings in New Haven, suggesting the test drives were used to position a vehicle to mislead investigators.
Detectives also found social links: Zion Perry, who had dated Jiang, had been an MIT student and was among Pan’s Facebook connections. While Pan and Jiang had no direct ties, investigators began to believe Pan had developed an obsession with Perry and staged events to conceal a targeted attack on Jiang.
Flight and manhunt
After the murder, Pan called his parents. They withdrew cash and began traveling south. The U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force became involved. Investigators traced phone pings, monitored bank withdrawals, and noted that GPS devices on vehicles driven by Pan had been disabled. Pan’s parents traveled repeatedly and used rental cars; surveillance captured them buying electronics and attempting countermeasures. Marshals watched the parents and eventually tracked them to a hotel where a phone number deleted from a clerk’s phone led investigators to a boarding house near Alabama State University. There, Pan was found and arrested; he had cash, multiple SIM cards and his father’s passport.
Evidence and prosecution
Although the exact murder weapon used on Jiang was never recovered, the investigation produced substantial forensic and physical evidence linking Pan to the crime: license plate imprint matches tied the rear bumper imprint on Jiang’s Prius to the plate on the SUV Pan used that night; DNA evidence linked Pan to a gun and ammunition found near the Arby’s; and Jiang’s blood was found on Pan’s hat and the gearshift of the SUV Pan was driving the night of the murder. The .45-caliber casings at multiple New Haven shootings matched each other and linked the incidents to the casings found at the homicide.
Pan was arrested and charged in New Haven. Prosecutors said the shootings and test drives were part of a plan intended, in part, to mislead investigators by staging earlier incidents. The Marshals and local law enforcement emphasized Pan’s resources and the possibility his parents assisted; investigators pursued the parents’ movements to find Pan but prosecutors later said they could not prove the parents knew their son had committed murder when they initially helped him.
Guilty plea and sentence
On February 29, 2024, Pan pled guilty to the murder of Kevin Jiang as part of a plea agreement. He agreed to a 35-year sentence without parole. At sentencing, family and friends described their loss; Jiang’s mother said the sentence was too short. Pan did not offer a public explanation for why he killed Jiang. Zion Perry addressed Pan in court, speaking of mercy and of grief.
Aftermath
Kevin Jiang was remembered as a devoted son, a caring partner and a community member who served in the Army National Guard and was studying at Yale. He was buried with military honors just before his 27th birthday. Investigators said if Pan had not gotten stuck on railroad tracks and if the Arby’s employee had not found the gun and bags, the case might have remained unsolved. The conviction closed a violent chapter for New Haven residents and brought accountability in a case that began as a fender bender and ended in a fatal shooting.