Photo of Qinxuan Pan Courtesy of New Haven Police Department
In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, New Haven Police Department Chief Otoniel Reyes named 29-year-old Qinxuan Pan as a person of interest in regard to the shooting of Kevin Jiang ENV ’22 this past Saturday.
Reyes said that police do not consider Pan a suspect. He reiterated that Pan is a “person of interest” who should be considered “armed and dangerous.” Reyes added that he believes Pan was in the area at the time of the shooting but did not name him as the shooter. Reyes said that Pan had stolen a vehicle from Massachusetts and was last seen with the car in North Haven on the night of Jiang’s death. NHPD believes that he is currently not in the state of Connecticut and has launched a nationwide manhunt in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“When a person’s a suspect we have sufficient information where we can definitively tell you that this person was the shooter,” Reyes said. “We are not prepared to identify him as the shooter in this investigation. At this point, the only information we can put out is that he is a person of interest.”
Reyes added that Pan became a person of interest after an interaction with the North Haven Police Department following Jiang’s shooting. North Haven police were called to the Best Western Hotel in North Haven after a man was seen acting oddly in the vicinity of a suspicious vehicle, Reyes said. They questioned Pan but ultimately left him at the hotel, according to an article from the New Haven Independent.
There are two warrants out for Pan’s arrest, one from Massachusetts and one out of New Haven with a $300,000 bond, in order to ensure that he can be extradited. The warrants are for the possession of a stolen car.
David Sundberg — special agent in charge of the New Haven FBI office — said at the press conference that the FBI is able to “leverage broad investigative resources” for cases like these, although he declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation.
Originally from Shanghai, China, Pan was born on Apr. 16, 1991 and studied computer science as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 2013. Pan is currently a researcher with MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Pan’s most recent address was in Malden, Massachusetts. Jiang’s fiancee Zion Perry GRD ’26 received her bachelor’s degree in bioengineering last year from MIT. The two are friends on Facebook.
Pan was last seen at the Best Western Hotel in North Haven, at 201 Washington Ave., on Saturday. Should anyone in the public come into contact with Pan, the police urged “extreme caution.” Even so, Reyes added that the NHPD do not feel as though the Pan is currently a “prevailing threat to the community.”
Tips can be submitted to NHPD at 203-946-6304.
Talat Aman | talat.aman@yale.edu
Julia Brown | julia.k.brown@yale.edu
Madison Hahamy | madison.hahamy@yale.edu
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