A University of Southern California student stabbed and killed a psychology professor on campus Friday afternoon, authorities said, following what was described as a “personal dispute.”
Police have not released the name of the suspect in the stabbing or detailed what led up to the killing in a building near the southwest edge of campus. Investigators have said only that the assailant is a student in his 20s.
Campus public safety officers detained the student and turned him over to Los Angeles city police on Saturday.
The university identified the victim as Bosco Tjan, an expert on vision loss who focused on age-related ailments. He was the co-director of USC’s Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center and had taught at the school since 2001.
The stabbing happened just days after an Ohio State student drove a car into a crowd outside a building at that university, then attacked people with a butcher knife. Authorities have not ruled out whether that attack was terrorism related.
In Los Angeles, police hurried to say that students and the public at large weren’t in danger.
“This was not a random act of violence,” USC’s Department of Public Safety said in a news release. “The Los Angeles Police Department believes this was the result of personal dispute.”
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Chris Purington, project manager at Tjan’s lab, told the Associated Press that Tjan was married with one son. Purington said he never knew of anyone who had a problem with Tjan or would want to see him dead.
“He was somebody who really cared about people. I know he cared about me,” Purington told the AP while crying. “He mentored people, and he looked out for them. He spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a mentor and guide people. . . .People talk about scientists as very cold or robotic. Bosco is a guy that he could talk to anybody about anything.”
Featured Image: USC
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
