Student admits he strangled girlfriend in US motel room
Print Edition
A Chinese student admitted killing his girlfriend in the United States when he appeared in court in his hometown of Wenzhou in east China’s Zhejiang Province on Wednesday.
Former University of Iowa student Li Xiangnan, 25, was a student at the University of Iowa when he strangled Shao Tong, 20, in a Nevada motel in September 2014, a Wenzhou court heard.
Li told the court he had overheard his girlfriend telling her roommate she had grown bored with him a few days before they checked in to the Budget Inn for the weekend.
On the night of September 6, 2014, a Saturday, Shao, a Chinese national and student at Iowa State University, told him she was in love with someone else. During the subsequent quarrel, Li strangled her.
“She covered my face with pillow and I almost couldn’t breathe. Then I sat on her and pinched her neck,” Li said, according to a report in yesterday’s Qianjiang Evening News. “At first she resisted but about one or two minutes later, she didn’t move. I shouted her name but she didn’t respond.”
Li said he tried to give her artificial respiration, but it didn’t work.
Around 1am on the Sunday, he put Shao’s body in a suitcase along with a dumbbell and put it in the trunk of his car. He had planned to dispose of the body in a lake but instead drove home and left the car in a nearby parking lot.
The next day he took a flight to China.
The murder came to light when Shao’s body was discovered on September 26. On May 13, 2015, Li handed himself in to police in Wenzhou.
Li said he acted on an impulse, but prosecutors said the crime was premeditated, citing Li’s purchase of the suitcase, two dumbbells and a ticket to China before the killing.
Li told the court the couple had met at a TOFEL training class in Beijing in 2011 and became lovers in 2012.
“I have never ever loved a person so much,” the newspaper said he told the court. He said they met up every weekend. “We were so close and good.”
Li added: “I was too impetuous and irrational.
“I felt so sorry for her.”
The court said that given the complexity of the case it would announce his sentence at a later date.
China does not extradite its citizens, but says it can put them on trial regardless of where a crime occurred.
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