The city of Los Angeles Tuesday, April 17, added $75,000 to reward money offered for information leading to whoever killed two USC graduate students from China.
Reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in last Wednesday’s shooting deaths of Ying Wu and Ming Qu, both 23, now stands at $200,000.
City Councilman Bernard Parks, a former police chief whose 8th Council District includes the area around USC, sponsored the reward.
“The last thing a parent thinks about when they send their kid to college is that they’re going to have to bury them before they reach their graduation,” Parks said.
The parents of the electrical engineering students arrived in Los Angeles from China over the weekend.
Rain was falling about 1 a.m. when the couple was shot while sitting in a double-parked BMW. Police said surveillance video recovered in the area showed the likely getaway car was dark-colored. Little else has been made public.
“Someone knows who did this,” City Councilwo-man Jan Perry said, “and I hope that this reward will stimulate some activity and cause someone to care enough about two people who were just studying to have a better life and were harming no one, two young people whose entire lives were ahead of them, and bring some justice.”
Wu was found in front passenger seat, and Qu was found on the steps of a nearby house, police said.
Parks said the neighborhood was generally safe.
“If you look around the USC campus, it’s very low crime, and I think you’ll also find very, very few violent crimes. But one’s too many,” he said.
A memorial service for the students was held Wednesday evening at the Shrine Auditorium.
Anyone with more information as to the name or whereabouts of the killer is urged to call detectives at (213) 485-4341, or (877) LAPD-24-7.
