UNC shooting suspect will not face death penalty, DA says
A district attorney has ruled out the possibility of seeking the death penalty for the UNC doctoral student accused of murdering his academic advisor in a shooting that sparked terror across the Chapel Hill campus. The UNC community is still reeling from a shooting on Monday that left one faculty member dead and forced frantic students fearing for their lives to barricade themselves inside lecture halls. Tailei Qi, an applied sciences PhD student at UNC, has been charged with first-degree murder and possession of a weapon on academic premises in connection with the fatal shooting of his lab advisor Zijie Yan. Mr Qi appeared in court on Tuesday and was ordered held without bail. The suspect had a Mandarin interpreter during his arraignment and was scheduled to reappear in court next month. Prosecutors did not share a potential motive for why Mr Qi allegedly carried out the attack on Yan. In an interview following the hearing, Orange County District Attorney Jeff Niemen said he would not be seeking the death penalty in Mr Qi’s case “or any case,” FOX8 reports. Responding to criticism about his stance on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr Nieman said: “I was very transparent about my position on the death penalty in candidate forums.” Mr Nieman pledged to not seek the death penalty if elected as he campaigned in 2021 to become the DA in Chatam and Orange counties. “You can let someone out of prison, but you can’t un-kill them,” Mr Nieman said in a statement at the time. “The death penalty is a complicated societal issue, one that I am ready to discuss in greater depth with our community members in the months ahead. But for the reasons briefly cited above and more, I will not seek the death penalty in my district.” Mr Qi is being held without bail at the Orage County Sheriff’s Jail in Hillsborough County. He was arrested near a residential area two miles away from campus following a three-hour lockdown on Monday. According to his LinkedIn page, Mr Qi graduated from Wuhan University in 2015 and also received a master’s in material science from Lousiana State University in 2021. Mr Qi then joined UNC at Chapel Hill’s Yan Lab in 2022, with his profile page on the university’s website taken down by Tuesday. Wen Liu, a 2022 UNC graduate who worked in the lab with Qi, told the AP that he was “somewhat reserved” but still “pretty sociable.” Ms Liu also said that Qi would often answer other lab member’s questions with “patience and respect.” “For hours he would just be doing things and explaining along the way,” Ms Liu said. UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said on Tuesday that Yan left two young daughters behind and described the slain professor as a “beloved colleague and friend” who was fondly remembered by everyone who crossed paths with him. Mr Qi is expected to appear in court again on 18 September. Read More UNC shooting updates: Suspect Tailei Qi complained about professor Zijie Yan online before Chapel Hill attack UNC Chapel Hill graduate student Tailei Qi charged with murder in shooting of faculty member A new college term, a faculty member killed and a student arrested: What we know about the UNC shooting
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Donald Trump Jr shares doctored Office clip showing Ron DeSantis wearing a woman’s suit
Donald Trump Jr has shared a seemingly AI-generated clip of Ron DeSantis edited into the role of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott in The Office in a clip in which the character is mocked for wearing a woman’s suit. “Imagine when next time it’s not an obvious spoof from The Office but an attempt to depict itself as legitimate and much more nefarious,” CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted. “Don Jr among others has shared this video. I don’t think any of us are ready for this next election online,” Alex Thompson of Axios said. Democratic consultant Tim Hogan added that “Folks, we simply are not ready for the 2024 GOP primary memes”. “Rhonda Santis is a perfect drag name, just saying,” Mr Hogan tweeted. Philip Germain at the Lincoln Project added: “I am once again asking for Steve Carrell to play DeSantis on SNL.” “I for one welcome the onslaught of election-season deepfakes,” Jesse Walker of Reason magazine wrote. As the mockery continued of Mr DeSantis’s glitch-ridden campaign launch, the Florida governor began to push back. He slammed his main rival for the 2024 GOP nomination, former President Donald Trump, claiming he “is a different guy” than when he first ran for president. Mr Trump is leading all other Republican candidates for the party’s presidential nomination, with Mr DeSantis running in second place, according to polls. Mr DeSantis officially embarked on his own bid for the White House earlier this week in a chaotic Twitter Spaces event with billionaire Elon Musk. The governor told radio host Matt Murphy that he was running to the right of Mr Trump and portrayed himself as more conservative, according to USA Today. “It seems like he’s running to the left and I have always been somebody that’s just been moored in conservative principles,” said Mr DeSantis. “So these will be interesting debates to have, but I can tell you, you don’t win nationally by moving to the left, you win nationally by standing for bold policy. We showed that in Florida. I never watered down anything I did.” And Mr DeSantis claimed that Mr Trump is not the same person who first ran for office. “I don’t know what happened to Donald Trump – this is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016 and I think the direction that he’s going with his campaign is the wrong direction,” Mr DeSantis said. And he attacked Mr Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic while in office. “I think [Trump] did great for three years, but when he turned the country over to Fauci in March of 2020 that destroyed millions of people’s lives,” Mr DeSantis said on a podcast. “And in Florida, we were one of the few that stood up, cut against the grain, took incoming fire from media, bureaucracy, the left, even a lot of Republicans, had school open, preserved businesses.” Read More Florida mom who tried to ban Amanda Gorman’s book has ties to far-right groups DeSantis accuses Trump of ‘moving to the left’ as he tells ex-president: ‘You’ve changed’ Ron DeSantis news – live: Don Jr shares AI-doctored clip of The Office showing DeSantis wearing woman’s suit Ivanka and Jared split over attending Trump 2024 launch – follow live Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his first term? Four big lies Trump told during his 2024 presidential announcement
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