Police charged a graduate student of the University of North Carolina with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of a faculty member. This incident triggered a campus-wide lockdown as the authorities searched for the shooter.

34-year-old Tailei Qi will face an initial hearing concerning the Monday shooting of Zijie Yan inside a science building on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. On top of the murder charge, he is accused of illegally possessing a firearm on educational premises.

Yan is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences and Qi is a graduate student who is part of Yan’s research group.

The Yan Research Group of the University of North Carolina was headed by Yan, who was recently joined by Qi. Yan had previously obtained his doctorate in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and served as an assistant professor at Clarkson University. In 2019, he relocated to Chapel Hill and joined the faculty.

Authorities reported that Qi was apprehended after a three-hour-long security lockdown.

The shooting took place only one week after the start of the fall semester.