Do you think this one is an honor code violation?
Police have charged two University of Virginia students in connection with the abduction of a 20-year-old man from China and extortion attempt near Tysons Corner, News4’s Julie Carey reported.
Police said they received a call early Nov. 21 informing them that the man was abducted Nov. 20 by two armed men wearing masks. The suspects allowed the victim to place a phone call advising of the abduction and the $500,000 ransom demand. A Fairfax County homicide detective, FBI special agent and Falls Church police found the victim Nov. 21 at Stratford Motor Lodge at 300 W. Broad St. in Falls Church. He was bound, gagged and held in a hotel room bathroom, police said. The suspects were also in the room….
Who are these 2? This seems too intense for a couple of smart kids from NOVA China.
Guan Yu Lu, 19, of 1709 Jefferson Park Ave. No. 4 in Charlottesville, and Bai Chuan Shu, 19, of 583 Brandon Ave.
They are also Engineering students expected to graduate in 2010, according to UVA’s people directory. They are on Facebook as well.
Here are their pictures and Facebook profiles.
Guan Yu Lu:
Popularity: 10% [?]
Tagged as: Crime, University of Virginia, UVA, Virginia
Clearly they weren’t at the top of their engineering class. Is this for real, or another case of mistaken identity, Chinese names and all…
Cringe. Here come a parade of jokes about how Tech engineers would’ve done it better.
At the risking of being completely insensitive, are asian college boys attending virginia state schools the new white middle aged men living in cottages in Montana? WTF?
This seems ridic to me. I mean honestly, why would you need to abduct someone if you were in UVA engineering.. wouldn’t you pay off your student loans in 2 years?
When I was at UVA we used to abduct kids from China all the time. No one ever got bent out of shape over it.
There are loads of Chinese students at UVA. I’d guess that China and Korea send more students to UVA than all the other countries combined.
The question about the honor code was a joke, right?
dave, you are my hero.
No, I was dead serious (in a joking, non serious kind of way).
There’s no doubt that these two are idiots. But defaming an entire population of international Asian students and joking about kidnapping Chinese children? Yeah, that’s really classy too. There’s a fine line between being funny and being a joke.
And yes, I’m a Wahoo engineer.
Chinese are the new Arabs.
Anne, what are you talking about?
Wait…who was trying to be classy?
Ethan, you’re being abusive.
Anne, I appreciate your concern. I know Thor didn’t intend to offend. This blog skews bold and reactive.
Here are a few resources to prepare you for the media storm to come.
Suggested reading on the culture of education for young Chinese in America– specifically the pressure on them:
Wikipedia: Education in the People’s Republic of China (Higher Education on)
The Atlantic Monthly: James Fallows’ blog on life in China
Facts:
- The Mainland Student Network of Chinese undergraduate students is about 100 members strong.
- About 5% of U.Va.’s student body (or 900) is comprised of foreign nationals. TheUpstart is correct about students from Asia, according to Yupster.
Oooh a few more. Good ones.
- New York Times Magazine: Re-education, April 1, 2007
- TIME: Asia’s Overscheduled Kids, March 20, 2006
- NY Times: The Educated Giant, May 28, 2007
Somebody got sense of humor cancer.
Is it true that these students are from an unknown origin and the person they abducted was actually Dennis Kucinich?
There are billions of Asians, so undoubtedly there will be anomalies with respect to criminal behavior. We live in a society of kneejerk reactionism. One college student kills 32 people in a shooting rampage. Now every university in America has to spend money on creating bureaucracies to preemptively deal with an unpredictable and unstoppable event that occurs only once every few decades. Every door needs a new lock, every building needs a new escape route, and now universities wants every cell phone number to send out text messages (UVA sent out a test warning message over summer saying that class the following day was canceled due to weather without stating the message was a test–the weather was warm and sunny, and it caused much confusion among staff and students). Some argue we need more gun control. Others argue we need concealed carry permits on campus. For one anomalous event.
Undoubtedly what will spring of this story is a call for stricter controls on immigration. “Those goddamn Asians,” people like Virgil Goode will say. He’ll rally the so-called conservatives. Push for another Chinese Exclusion Act. Asians contribute greatly to science, but it doesn’t matter. America is king of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Frankly, I find it all hilarious. How could anyone be so stupid as to use a credit card of the victim of the crime? They must not have television in China. Perhaps the Chinese are not as well-educated as we thought they were.
Guan’s facebook profile lists Prison Break among his TV interests. Not saying; I’m just saying.
Washington Post story on this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/26/AR2007112602043.html?hpid=topnews
I’m fairly certain UVA had actually met with the vendor who sold the broadcast text message system before the Tech shootings. I believe the vendor had been making his way around the state, meeting with various schools.
UVA’s critical incident/emergency action plans were well laid out before the Tech shootings. Every school has these plans, though some aren’t as good as others. In my limited reading of them, I’d say UVA’s was quite good. I suspect that little in those plans changed, but that after the shootings, members of the UVA community were better educated about them.
It didn’t cause any confusion among members of the community who had two brain cells to rub together. Everyone with whom I spoke had the immediate reaction of “they must be testing the system.”
Ethan, you should work for NBC 29. You do a great job inflating a non-story. No one is going to push for another Chinese Exclusion Act. Virgil Goode isn’t going to climb out from under his pathetic rock over this. Now, if the victim was a sweet kid from southwest, maybe…
Every school has emergency plans, but they are being revisited with respect to a potential for shooting. Even the emergency preparedness coordinator for UVA recently gave a talk to my department with preparations they have been taking for potential situations. Sure, they used natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes as common examples (and mentioned the Tech shooting a few times), but let’s be real: we would never have received this talk prior to the Virginia Tech shooting.
What I’m saying is that even more money is going to be spent dealing with something people ultimately have no control over. People think it’s better to waste millions of dollars than to appear like you’re not doing anything about a problem. Quite frankly, there is nothing that can be done about it. There are six billion people on earth and shit is going to happen.
[…] UVA Students Are Kidnapping Suspects [V] […]
wow. i haven’t seen this many claws out since i worked at the animal shelter.
rowr!
yeah it’s funny
One of them is my High School classmate, not in the same class, but played soccer together…
so sad to hear that…
The two E-schoolers are my friends and the victim was also my friend. The three of them go to know each other through friends. the victim goes to school in NOVA and from what I’ve heard he has a well-off family. But considering that the two abductors also have well-off families in China, I think that they did not do this for money. From their blogs, I got the feeling that they felt “empty” and probably lonely, especially during Thanksgiving break, and they went out looking for excitement or trouble in their case. I feel bad for them, this probably meant deportation to them, and getting expelled from UVa. Pitty…
I really think they are out of their minds, and maybe it was a joke gone bad sort of thing.
Just for a basic fact: not ALL Chinese are as well educated as you’d think. But for those who can come to UVa, the level of intelligence is already a given. Nevertheless, this is really something stupid of them to do.
If this had simply been a joke gone wrong, if they and the victim had decided together to extort some money from one of their families, one of the kids wouldn’t have been found bound and gagged in the tub. This won’t just give asian kids at UVA a bit of a black eye, it may give UVA a bit of one in China as well (”those were great kids till they went off to Charlottesville…”). No? As for the honor code, doesn’t that only deal with lying, cheating or stealing? The fact that they took the victim’s credit card on a spending spree is more likely to hurt them under the honor code then the fact that they kidnapped him.
I wonder if the coverage would have been different on this incident if it had happened here. I had some drunk frat boys crash into my car on University Circle a few years back. They grabbed their empties and abandoned one on their mom’s wrecked SUV in the middle of the road. I went to court as a witness, and everything was taken care of, no mention of alcohol, their 12 hour disappearance was chalked up to ‘going to get help’, etc.. It seemed like if you were a UVA student who could afford a lawyer and pay for whatever damage you had done, your transgressions would be swept under the carpet so as not to ruin your precious ‘future’. Not to mention UVA’s reputation.
Cathy, you care to elaborate on what you read on their blogs (or where we can find their blogs)?
Cathy, I am also interested in their blogs, can u offer us a link?
good news that they didnt kidnap an american, otherwise it would be so much worse
I am Shu’s classmate in middle school.
As I know,he is such a great guy,i really cannot believe what happens.I don’t think they really need that $500,000,or he has something which only he knows.
I’m from China and I’m a high-school sophomore.One of the suspect Baichuan Shu graduated from my school and I’ve heard of him when he was here in Shanghai.He is famous in school because he seemed to be a really outstanding student:talented,promising,athletic,or even good-looking.No one in the school could believe he actually did something like that.He has his personality and this may be leading to his crime.He is impulsive sometimes and cannot control himself well at times,but on a general basis he’s really really a nice guy.Trust me.He has a wealthy family and is well-educated.Before we get to know his real motive pls dont picture him as a utter bastard.yes he is in some way because he was stupid enough to do this,but if you dont know him well or if you dont know much about the whole kidnapping thing,dont be accusing and also,dont get the idea that all chinese are like that.We never conceive you guys as stupid as your president is,right?
Baichuan is really a good guy…we’re all shocked when hearing this news. it’s just too unbelievable for us all to believe that it’s the truth…he shouldn’t have done this!!!
we can only pray for him and hope that everything will be alright… >
Sometimes I cannot control the fact that I kidnap and pillage, either.
**rolls eyes**
Qian, thanks so much for weighing in.
We just write that off to the whole “Viking God of Thunder” thing …
Surprising choice of victim what with all the recalls going on right now.
(Expecting a slap but currently experiencing impulse control due to triple shot latte… sorry in advance)
oy
To Cathy: you mentioned that “The two E-schoolers are my friends and the victim was also my friend. The three of them go to know each other through friends. ” You mind giving more details on that? We are all worried about them and wanting to find out who the victim was and whats the connection between them? Thanks.
Cathy: seems like you are the only one so far that knows who the victim was.. please tell us more. Thank you
I got some messages from my classmate at UVA.He told me that these three guys actually know each other,and he never saw them quarrelling .That’s why when the victim recieved the phone call,he would come to the place to help Shu.
What i cannot understand is that why Shu and Lu need $500,000,need such a large amount of money.Maybe it is also a secret for the three.
In China,we were all shocked when we knew this on Tuesday,we found it unbelievable for our classmate.I agreed with Qian’s idea,He is impulsive sometimes and cannot control himself well at times,but on a general basis he’s really really a nice guy.
Maybe the police can give us a clear solution.
messeges,not messages,sorry.
Honey you got it right with messages!
(I know… we crazy Americans with no consistent verb conjugations, singular/plural forms, spelling, adjective modifers, etc.) — thanks for dropping by and voicing your thoughts.
To project the actions of a very small minority on their religion, ethnicity, age group, and socioeconomic status is only natural for humans, and I can’t think of a culture that’s immune to it. But I sincerely hope this case is treated as an isolated incident, which it is, and that these young men receive psych help, not alienation.
You are right~~~
What we wanna do is try our best to find out the underlying motives,and we should give him help.
I don’t think he is someone like Cho SeungHui.And according to his classmate in UVA,Shu is not a loner.Maybe he is impulsive to do this,and he needs psych help perhaps.
We can harldy imagine such a good boy could be someone as the news report,we cannot accept it ,really.
These two kids look “nice” on surface. But I have to say underneath the skin, one can definitely sense some sketchiness in them. This is what you get for focusing too much on materialism as a developing nation.
Judge Stitt who presided over the hearing passed away on 12 May 2008.
Will a new judge give the final verdict/sentence?
References:
Judge Stitt’s Obituary on WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202743.html
Latest on the trial on WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203207.html
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