A major breakthrough has been made in the case of Menghan Zhuang, a Chinese student studying in Southern California who was found murdered. The police have captured the suspect, Jack Minh Terry.
Terry, 22, has been charged with murder by the Los Angeles police. He is currently being held without bail and is scheduled to appear in court on the 27th of this month.
The case has been transferred to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, and Terry was officially charged with murder on Wednesday, March 6.
According to a statement released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Wednesday, detectives from the Homicide Bureau arrested Terry on February 16 in Garden Grove, Orange County.
On February 4, Menghan Zhuang, a 23-year-old student at the California Art Institute, was brutally murdered in her residence. A witness reported seeing a suspect entering the victim’s apartment the night before the crime, and on the day the victim was found dead, someone saw the same man jumping out of the victim’s second-floor bedroom window.
Menghan Zhuang held a student visa and had been living in the United States for three and a half years. Prior to the incident, she was a fourth-year student in the Art Department at the California Art Institute, and she shared an apartment at The Vistas in Newhall with a roommate.
At 6:47 p.m. on February 4, the Santa Clarita police received a report from Menghan Zhuang’s roommate. Upon arriving at the scene, law enforcement found Zhuang with multiple injuries. Despite immediate medical attention, she was pronounced dead on the scene due to the severity of her injuries.
During the investigation, it was discovered that a male companion of Menghan Zhuang was seen entering her apartment the day before the incident. According to investigators, a video showed that the man seen entering the apartment was the same person who later left the second-floor bedroom the following day.
On February 13, the police held a press conference and released a photo of an Asian suspect for the first time.