Former Graduate Student Pleads Guilty in January Virginia Tech Murder

A former Virginia Tech graduate student, Haiyang Zhu, pleaded guilty on Monday to the horrific killing of another graduate student, Xin Yang, who had rebuffed Mr. Zhu’s advances by saying she had a boyfriend whom she planned to marry. Ms. Yang was decapitated on January 21 in a cafe in the university’s Graduate Life Center where she and Mr. Zhu had been having coffee, the university reported at the time. She had arrived at the university from China only two weeks before the murder. Mr. Zhu, who is also from China, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, the Associated Press reported. Under Virginia law he would not be subject to the death penalty.