Man gets life for killing Chinese student

LOS ANGELES - A 21-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole on Wednesday for fatally beating with a baseball bat a 24-year-old Chinese electrical engineering graduate student at the University of Southern California.

"We lost the sunshine of our life, he is our only child," said Ji Songbo, father of student Ji Xinran, said on Wednesday through a translator in court. "People of our age are planning the weddings of their children, but we will never have the chance to prepare a wedding for our child. For these years, Xinran's mother can only sleep with sleeping pills."

In the court, the victim's mother was too distressed to make a statement before killer Andrew Garcia was sentenced.

Garcia sat motionless and stared straight ahead blankly before Ji's family, who traveled from China.

"Xinran came to the US with his dream - no one expected that he would be brutally killed. We are begging you to sentence him with the most severe punishment. I was supposed to hug my excellent nephew here, but now I can only hold his picture," said Du Zhaohui, the victim's aunt.

Authorities said Garcia and three others tried to rob Ji near the USC campus as Ji was walking home from a study session on July 24, 2014. Garcia was convicted on June 8 of first-degree murder. Co-defendant, Alejandra Guerrero, 19, was convicted of first-degree murder in October and awaits sentencing. Two other men, Jonathan Del Carmen, 22, and Alberto Ochoa, 20, await trials.

"This is the best result of the judgment we could expect so far," said Rose Tsai, the attorney representing Ji's family.

USC spokesman Eddie North-Hager also spoke in court, noting that a Xinran Ji Memorial Scholarship had been established for engineering graduate students from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Xinhua

(China Daily 08/18/2017 page11)