Tracing Xinran Ji’s final steps



Street view of the crime scene a week after Xinran Ji's murder. | Alex Zelenty (Neon Tommy)

Street view of the crime scene a week after Xinran Ji’s murder. | Alex Zelenty (Neon Tommy)

By Diana Crandall, Benjamin Dunn and Michelle Toh

The sporadically lit streets just north of campus are unassuming and benign, even after midnight falls. Faint laughter and the pulse of radios from security ambassadors can be heard throughout the spider web of USC housing on Thursday nights, an evening routinely celebrated with cocktails and kegs.

But the yellow jackets on street corners are glittering, clicking heels of co-eds make the security blanket cloaking the campus even more dangerous. The façade allows students to discard the memory of a murder that took place in their own neighborhood just seven months ago, on a night just like this one.

Xinran Ji, 24, walked a friend home after studying on Thursday, July 24, 2014. It was just after midnight when a car carrying five teenagers profiled Ji as a prime robbery victim “because he was Chinese” and therefore “must have money,” they believed. Four of the five individuals got out of the car and proceeded to beat Ji with a metal baseball bat and wrench. Bleeding and delirious, Ji stumbled back to his campus apartment where he later died that same evening from blunt force trauma to his head and neck.

The savage nature of the beating does not match the temperate atmosphere of the block, which Annenberg Digital News returned to on February 26. The team walked Jefferson to Orchard, and back to Ji’s apartment complex at approximately 1 a.m. The walk included two security ambassadors standing in silent surveillance as several students drifted up and down the block, in and out of parties and residence halls.

When we arrived at Ji’s complex, we found a group of about 10 USC students hanging out on the front steps.

Daniel Lee and James Lee are USC sophomores and plan to live in Ji’s apartment complex next school year. They say knowing of Ji’s killing doesn’t deter them from moving into the building – in fact, both agreed that USC’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) makes them “feel safe,” and they aren’t worried for their safety.

It’s impossible to tell if Ji was concerned for his safety before he was attacked. It is true that DPS slashed the number of stationed security ambassadors in half for last summer semester. Following Ji’s death in July, Deputy Chief David Carlisle proclaimed that “nothing is off the table when it comes to student safety.” For a full list of safety upgrades, click here.

For more insight into the retracing of Ji’s last steps, please check out of video below.

 

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Xinran Ji suffered fatal blows to head



Jonathan DelCarmen and Alberto Ochoa listen to witnesses give testimony as Rose Tsai, attorney for Xinran Ji's parents, watches from the audience. | Daina Beth Solomon

Jonathan DelCarmen and Alberto Ochoa listen to witnesses give testimony as Rose Tsai, attorney for Xinran Ji’s parents, watches from the audience. | Daina Beth Solomon

By Daina Beth Solomon, Celeste Alvarez and Olivia Lavoice

Xinran Ji died from swelling and bleeding inside his brain after being struck on the head at least six times with a blunt object, possibly a baseball bat, testified a L.A. County medical examiner Wednesday as prosecutors revealed evidence about the killing.

The 24-year-old from China was attacked last summer in an attempted robbery near his apartment, blocks from where he studied engineering at the University of Southern California.   

Deputy medical examiner Louis Pena said any one of six blows could have been fatal. Ultimately, the brain stem, which controls one’s breathing and heart rate, failed as capillaries ruptured and bled.  [Read more…]

USC student attempted to flee fatal attack



Rose Tsai, attorney for Xinran Ji's family, speaks to reporters at the court last summer.  Daina Beth Solomon

Rose Tsai, attorney for Xinran Ji’s family, speaks to reporters at the courthouse last summer, shortly following Ji’s death. | Daina Beth Solomon

By Daina Beth Solomon and Olga Grigoryants

Xinran Ji sprinted into the middle of the street toward his apartment near the University of Southern California last summer as three attackers dashed after, striking him one by one with a baseball bat. The 24-year-old engineering student then staggered home, where officers found him dead the next morning.

This was the account prosecutors presented in court Tuesday as they revealed video footage of the July 24 attack on Ji, a USC graduate student from China.

Deputy District Attorney John McKinney credited multiple surveillance cameras with helping bring murder charges against four teenagers.

“Once you know they were involved… it becomes clear who is who in the video, at least to me,” McKinney told reporters, holding a photo of Ji in graduation robes at his side. “And I think it will be to any fact finder.”

Jonathan DelCarmen, 19, and Andrew Garcia, 18, could face the death penalty for murder committed in the attempt of robbery. Two alleged accomplices, Alberto Ochoa, 17, and Alejandra Guerrero, 16 — exempt from capital punishment because they are minors — could face life in prison without parole. All are being held without bail.

USC tightened campus security following the spring 2012 murders of two graduate students from China, who were shot to death as they sat in a parked car near campus in what police called a robbery attempt gone wrong. And the university revved up safety measures yet again when an alleged gang member opened fire at a campus Halloween party the same year, wounding four people. Among the upgrades were installing security cameras and license plate readers.

See also: Brandon Spencer is paying a 40-year price for four shots that killed no one 

About seven camera recordings painted a picture of the evening’s events, said Los Angeles Police Det. Matthew Courtney, who retrieved the footage from USC along with private companies. A university-operated license plate reader led officers to the defendants, he said.

The suspects circled the neighborhood in a dark, 1993 Honda Accord for several minutes before stopping near 29th and Orchard streets, said Courtney. There, a nearby camera captured three suspects exit the car and confront Ji, who had left the apartment earlier that evening for a study group on campus.

Ochoa was the first to turn the baseball bat on Ji, said the prosecutor. The suspect then passed it to Garcia, who chased Ji around the corner and slammed him again. Guerrero came quickly after, also striking Ji. DelCarmen drove behind the group, picking up his alleged accomplices.

Courtney said Ji’s roommate heard Ji sniffling when he returned around 3 a.m., but attributed it to a cold. She found him the next morning curled in his bed under a purple and white striped comforter, unresponsive.

When detectives entered, they discovered blood smeared on the floor, walls and bathroom sink. Red stains mottled Ji’s sneakers and white pants. As the prosecutor brought up an image of Ji’s white T-shirt soaked through in crimson, onlookers gasped, with one muttering: “Oh, God.”

A trail of blood splatters — on lobby walls, a UPS box and sidewalks — led detectives to the first attack site. Here, they recovered Ji’s metal-rimmed glasses, shattered.

The defendants watched these images projected onto a large screen attentively, without acknowledging each other or their families sitting alongside Ji’s supporters in the courtroom. DelCarmen, wearing a blue jumpsuit, and Guerrero, in orange, sat most of the day slouched and inexpressive. Ochoa, also clad in orange, raised his eyebrows and jiggled his right foot as the prosecutor displayed evidence. When a video of the attack was played, Ochoa took off his glasses and became still.

Garcia will be addressed separately. A judge said that the alleged accomplice, who made an outburst in court the day before, may be “incompetent to go through proceedings.” His lawyer did not attend Tuesday’s hearing.

A fifth person may also be involved: Prosecutors say a 14-year-old girl sat in the backseat of DelCarmen’s car. She has not been charged in Ji’s death. However, she is being prosecuted in juvenile court in connection with a second robbery that the gang attempted later that night at Dockweiler Beach.

One of two victims, Claudia Rocha, testified that she was sitting on a curb with a friend near a roadway overlooking the beach when Ochoa approached with a baseball bat over his shoulder. As he aimed it at her friend, Rocha suddenly found herself fending off the two girls.

“We just want the keys to the car,” she recalled Guerrero saying. Rocha responded she didn’t have a car, and Guerrero said, “Then give us your purse.” As Rocha resisted, Guerrero pulled out a pocket knife and slashed at her purse strap.

Police arrested all five suspects by the following morning, quickly linking their license plate and the bat to Ji’s killing.

McKinney will present additional evidence Wednesday, planning to call on Rocha’s friend, the coroner and other detectives to provide further details of Ji’s death.

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George McKenna wins LAUSD School Board, LAPD reacts to South LA death + USC attackers plead not guilty



George McKenna | electmckenna.com

LA School Report: George McKenna won the District 1 seat of the LAUSD School Board covering a swath of South L.A., beating opponent Alex Johnson with 53 percent of the vote. Just 8 percent of eligible voters turned out for the runoff election.

LA Times: The LAPD provides details on the controversial killing of 25-year-old Ezell Ford in South L.A.

Reuters: Four teenagers pleaded not guilty to the fatal attack of USC engineering graduate student Xinran Ji.

LA Weekly: South LA’s KIPP Empower Academy Charter School in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood is named as one of the “awesome LAUSD schools in affordable neighborhoods” in a piece by our colleague Ani Ucar from Annenberg Radio News.

NBC: School is back in session, and things are starting to get back to normal at Miramonte Elementary, the South L.A. campus plagued since 2012 by reports of child abuse.

KCET Artbound: The old church at 49th and Compton is actually a modernist gem by architect Rudolph Schindler.

CityWatch: Is predatory loaning happening in South L.A.?