Yingying Zhang, a Chinese college student visiting the University of Illinois who has been missing since Friday, June 9, has been confirmed to have been kidnapped, according to police.
Zhang’s friends originally contacted police on Saturday, June 10 after they hadn’t heard from her since she went to an apartment complex to sign a lease on Friday. That Monday, University of Illinois Police released a video showing the 26-year-old getting off of a bus and into a black Saturn Astra in Urbana around 2 PM on Friday.
Now, after their investigation, authorities have determined that Shang was kidnapped on her way to sign a lease.
via NBC News:
Her disappearance June 9 on her way to sign an apartment lease is being treated as a kidnapping. The case has shaken staff and students at Illinois’ flagship public school in Urbana-Champaign. And it’s led some parents of the more than 300,000 Chinese students currently studying at American universities to question whether it’s safe send to their children to the United State
Local police and the FBI say Zhang’s case is a top priority, though they have withheld details of their investigation, even from the father, said Yingying Zhang’s boyfriend, who sat in on the weekend interview with the father from the 44,000-student campus about 140 miles south of Chicago.
The 5-foot-4, 110-pound Zhang was last seen wearing a baseball cap and carrying a backpack, standing by a black Saturn Astra before entering on Friday, June 9. Investigators say the driver appeared to be a white male. The FBI is now offering a $10,000 reward for information in the case.
The University of Illinois has the largest Chinese student population of any United States college with 5,600 students enrolled at the school.
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