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On September 26, 2014, police in Iowa City, Iowa, United States, discovered a body in the trunk of a car parked in an apartment complex on the outskirts of town. It was later identified as Shao Tong (, born 1994), 20, a Chinese undergraduate at Iowa State University (ISU), in whose name the vehicle was registered. She had been reported missing nine days earlier. The cause of death was found to be homicide by suffocation. Shao had last been seen on September 7, at a hotel outside Nevada, a small town east of Ames, where ISU is located. She had been spending the weekend there with her boyfriend, Li Xiangnan (), a student at the University of Iowa, located in Iowa City. Her car and body were in the apartment complex he lived in. Li was not present. Police believe that after abruptly checking out of the hotel the following morning, he had used her phone to text her friends that she was going to be away for a while and that Li had to return to China for a family emergency. While there was no evidence of Shao's purported travel, Li had flown back to Beijing, but beyond that point his whereabouts were unknown. Early in 2015, authorities in Johnson County charged Li with first-degree murder and obtained an arrest warrant. Chinese Internet users began circulating pictures of Li, who remained at large. After Chinese detectives traveled to Iowa to visit the crime scene and review evidence, they too charged Li with intentional murder under Chinese law, which allows the prosecution of any Chinese citizen for a crime even if it occurred abroad. He surrendered to police in his native Wenzhou in May. It is likely that he will be prosecuted there, since not only is there no extradition treaty between China and the United States, China does not extradite its own citizens. ==Background== Shao was born in the coastal Chinese city of Dalian in 1994, the only child of a family typical of China's emerging middle class. Her father was a civil servant who worked in food safety inspection; her mother a homemaker. She attended Dalian Yuming High School, and aspired to become a biologist.〔 Yuming students routinely perform well on China's National Higher Education Entrance Examination or ''gaokao'', and in the Olympic Competition, which offers winners admission to college without having to take the ''gaokao''. In the late 2000s, Shao and her then boyfriend entered the competition. He won and attended a prestigious university in southern China; she did not.〔 She decided to study in the U.S. instead, which she was able to do because her parents had saved over US$100,000 toward her education. In 2011 she went to Beijing to take a preparatory course for the Test of English as a Foreign Language. There she met Li Xiangnan, three years her senior, from Wenzhou. Shao's mother says he developed a crush on her daughter, which was not unusual—many other young men had shown such an interest in her daughter. She met him once when he came to Dalian, and recalls him as shy. Although he seemed to be from a rich background, she and her husband did not think he was right for their daughter.〔 Shao was accepted at Iowa State University (ISU), in Ames, where she began majoring in chemical engineering in 2012, a choice that pleased her father since not many women enter that field.〔 Li "chased () from China to the U.S," an acquaintance said, transferring from Rochester Institute of Technology to the University of Iowa in Iowa City, away,〔 where he studied business.〔 At Iowa State, friends, mostly fellow Chinese students, recalled her as being very outgoing, tutoring students in Chinese and dancing at parties. She also distinguished herself for her ability to solve Rubik's cube quickly. Although engineering was not her favorite subject, she maintained a grade point average of 3.75.〔 Li and Shao continued to socialize in Iowa. According to her friends, he seemed to believe he was her boyfriend, although others who knew her said she had ongoing relationships with other men as well, not all of whom were aware of the others. He moved in with her in summer 2013, to the great annoyance of her roommate. "He didn't clean up. It's just not normal that a boy lived in a girl's dorm," she told a Chinese news outlet. "We tried to kick him out, but he wouldn't leave."〔 In early 2014, he gave Shao's address as his on two occasions when he was cited for traffic violations while driving his 2009 BMW in Coralville, outside Iowa City. Shao's other friends shared the same low opinion of Li, to the point that Shao avoided talking about him in their presence. A cousin in China noted that on visits home, Shao seemed more withdrawn than she had been in the past.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shao Tong murder case」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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