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A Chinese graduate student at the University of Southern California died Thursday after being attacked by at least three men a few blocks from campus, The Los Angeles Times reported. Police said that Xinran Ji, an engineering student, was assaulted with a blunt object while walking home from a study group around 12:45 a.m.; he was able to make it to his nearby off-campus apartment, where he was subsequently found dead.
USC has experienced a series of violent incidents that have shaken up prospective and current students. In April of 2012, two Chinese graduate students were shot and killed while sitting in a parked car just west of campus, leading their parents to file a wrongful death suit alleging that the university had provided misleading information on safety. Six months after that, a gunman opened fire outside a Halloween party, wounding four people.
The university has since that time introduced a number of new measures aimed at improving safety, though The Los Angeles Times noted that Thursday’s attack “once again exposed the limits of the university’s efforts outside school grounds.”
