Faculty member killed in campus shooting at UNC-Chapel Hill

A graduate student allegedly shot and killed a faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill Monday afternoon, according to university officials and police, locking down the campus for several hours.

The suspect, Tailei Qi, a graduate student in applied physical sciences, was taken into custody Monday afternoon. Formal charges are pending, police said at a press conference Monday evening.

University officials and police did not identify the deceased faculty member as they worked to notify their family.

Police have not pinpointed a motive, but Qi’s Twitter posts expressed frustration, stress and depression. This year and last, he made a series of vague posts about conflict with other students and his “PI” or principal investigator, usually a faculty member assigned by the university to work with students on research projects.

It is not clear whether that PI is the faculty member who was killed.

“Just feel my privacy was insulted,” Qi wrote in a Twitter post on July 18 2022. “When I work, I will think I was showing the boss I am working instead of interests, devaluing the meaning of my work. That’s so disgusting. Self-respect block me from working. Then it takes pains to convince myself what I do is just because I like.”

On Aug. 1 of last year he posted:

“Bully in America seems to be a problem. It often comes with people not stopping them at the first time. Explanation is not a solution but makes them feel others will plead them every time they raise a problem, making them voyeur to find an excuse day and night.”

On Aug. 18, 2022, he made another vague post about a conflict with students involving his PI:

“Just have a talk with my PI and get his promise. He should have more experience to handle with these girls and tattletales. Then, we can just get ourselves out of these stupid topic. Let’s just focus our attention on nature. I won’t change anything if not necessary.”

In October of 2022 he again made vague posts about conflicts with his PI and other students: “Both the group of people to say I am lazy and that to prove me working hard instead of telling me that they are trying to consume my privacy,” he posted on Oct 31, 2022. “I judge their motivation is only to tell my PI then control me by taletelling.”

“But it’s weird when I talked about it with my PI,” he posted. “He said no people spoke to him about that. So it’s nothing but some voyeurism for these people?”

In another vague post on May 30 of this year, Qi again seemed to express frustration with his working environment: “These kind of people may be a good man actually, but might not be a sincere friend,” he posted. “For a PHD student, pay much attention to working time every day is really childish…I know many people want to me to show them working and working, but no…that’s not human at all.”

In June of this year, he posted a series of vague posts denigrating women.

On June 5 he posted: “Many counter-intuitive (sic) situation in society: minimum wage do more harm to instead to protect the poor; gender quota is not to protect women but to enhance discrimination.”

“When this kind of girl shows her ‘best’ to beg others to ‘help’ me, all people then look down on me,” he posted the evening of June 12. “Kind of angelic bitch.”

Several tweets before that one were deleted, leaving it without context.

On July 31 he posted about wanting to make new friends.

“Would like to make some new friends,” he posted. “I am a second-year PhD student, interested in nanoparticle synthesis, optical trapping, self-assembly, spectra analysis, and ML. a bit stupid in daily trifles, very enthusiastic talking about research.