Teen Accused in NYC Grad Student's Death
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(AP) - A 14-year-old boy was charged with manslaughter in the death of a Columbia University graduate student who was punched and chased into traffic, hit by a car and killed, police said.
The attack was "predatory in nature," prosecutor Keith Brown told a judge Monday at a family court hearing attended by the boy. A police detective testified that the suspect showed no remorse while confessing to the crime.
Police originally suspected Minghui Yu, 24, was the victim of a robbery Friday night as he walked home from his girlfriend's apartment. But two other boys who were with the suspect at the time later told investigators it was a crime of impulse, police said Monday.
"Watch what I do to this guy," the attacker said before pouncing on Yu, according to the other boys. The suspect himself insisted he had been egged on by his friends, police said.
Authorities allege Yu's assailant grabbed and struck him several times on a street median. When Yu broke free and ran across a southbound lane, he was struck by a sport utility vehicle.
Yu was pronounced dead at a hospital. The driver of the car was not charged.
Police were able to identify the suspect by studying footage from a security camera that showed the three boys fleeing the scene on foot.
The suspect, whose name was not released because he was a minor, appeared to fight back tears Monday as the judge decided to lock him up in a juvenile detention facility until his next court date on Thursday. She said she had no choice because of the seriousness of the allegations and because no one in the city had legal custody of him.
The boy's mother, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla., and suffers from depression, decided to "ship him" to New York at the beginning of the year to live with relatives because "she could not handle (him)," according to a social worker's report.
Two women who identified themselves as the suspect's aunts said the death was an accident caused by "child's play," and insisted their nephew was remorseful.
"He cries night by night," one said.
Yu, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics and a teaching fellow in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was a native of China.
"He's a really nice guy, and he's worried about others," said Chao Sun, 24, who said she had been dating Yu for several months. "I can't imagine he would do anything to harm other people."