A student on Friday stabbed a psychology professor to death on the University of Southern California (USC) campus in Los Angeles in what was a personal dispute, authorities said.
Los Angeles Police Officer Meghan Aguilar said the professor was killed inside the Seeley G. Mudd building in the heart of campus.
She said a male student was arrested without incident immediately after police arrived at the scene of the attack, but his name was not released.
Aguilar could not say who called police but said it was not the professor or the student.
Aguilar said the student was set to be interviewed on Friday night and that his name would be released after he was charged.
University president C. L. Max Nikias identified the professor killed as Bosco Tjan in a letter addressed to the university community.
Tjan joined the university in 2001, taught in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and served as codirector of the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, Nikias said.
“As the Trojan family mourns professor Tjan’s untimely passing, we will keep his family in our thoughts,” Nikias said.
The university’s Department of Public Safety said in a statement that investigators believe the attack was not random and “was the result of a personal dispute.”
Chris Purington, project manager at Tjan’s lab, said he never heard of anyone having a problem with Tjan — a married father of one son listed in public records as 50 years old — and had no idea who would have wanted him dead.
“He was somebody who really cared about people. I know he cared about me,” Purington said through tears. “He mentored people and he looked out for them. He spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a mentor and guide people.”
He said the professor gave him a job both after he graduated from the university and after graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley.
Purington traveled with Tjan for various science conferences and said that everyone knew and loved the professor.
“He just had this energy about him. Kinetic might be the word,” Purington said. “He had a huge impact on my life.”
The university was rocked last year by the beating to death of graduate student Ji Xinran (姬欣然), who was attacked and beaten by several people as he walked back to his off-campus apartment late at night after attending a study session.
After Ji’s murder university officials sought to reassure parents of Chinese exchange students that the campus and its surrounding areas were safe.
In 2012, Chinese graduate students Qu Ming (瞿銘) and Wu Ying (吳穎) were shot to death as they sat in their car about 1km from campus.
The university has 44,000 students enrolled, including more than 10,000 international students.
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