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In the latest court hearing on the matter, Qinxuan Pan received more time to review evidence implicating him in the murder of Yale grad student Kevin Jiang. 

That hearing took place in the state courthouse Wednesday morning in downtown, exactly 14 months after the murder. State Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon decided to allow the case to be pushed back by two months to June 2. This was the fifth hearing granting Pan and his attorney Kevin Smith extensions to review state evidence pointing to Pan as the murderer.

After the last hearing requesting an extension for Pan in March, Pan’s lawyer noted that Pan must read through thousands of pages of evidence at the correctional facility where he is being held. Smith explained that Pan has had difficulty reading through these documents because of limited access to the prison library. That limited access, he said, was due to staffing shortages in the Connecticut Department of Corrections. 

The New Haven Independent reported that two friends of Jiang’s mother were present at the hearing Wednesday. One of those friends told the Independent that the case has “really shocked” the local Chinese community. 

“We can see that [Jiang] was a good kid, actually a role model for a younger generation,” the man told the Independent. 

Jiang, who was attending the Yale School of the Environment, was shot and killed Feb. 6 last year in the East Rock neighborhood just over a week after he proposed to his fiance Zion Perry GRD ’26. The New Haven Police Department named Pan as a person of interest in the case Feb. 10, which led to a months long manhunt as Pan eluded police.

Pan was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Montgomery, Ala. with seven cellphones, $19,000 in cash and his father’s passport. According to prosecutors, he was also renting an apartment under a fake name. 

Pan is currently being held on a $20 million bond. 

SOPHIE SONNENFELD
Sophie Sonnenfeld is Managing Editor of the Yale Daily News. She previously served as City Editor and covered cops and courts as a beat reporter. She is a junior in Branford College double majoring in political science and anthropology.