Brent Christensen

We're a square county right in the middle of East Central Illinois.

People here are what I would call salt of the earth people.

People who work hard, have strong values.

The University of Illinois straddles both cities, Champaign and Urbana.

The story itself plays out essentially on the U of I campus from beginning to end.

It's a beautiful campus.

It's sprawling.

YouTube was developed by two of our alums.

In the spring of 2016, a new person flies from China, joining thousands of other Chinese students, a brilliant visiting scholar.

She was 26 years old and her name is Yingying Zhang.

Yingying was a graduate student from one of the top universities in all of China.

She was an academic superstar and she had a real zest for experiencing all sorts of different things.

Before she came to the U.S., her friends celebrating Yingying's birthday, and that party also became a farewell party before her journey to the U.S.

She felt that the University of Illinois here was one of the best places she could go in her field of environmental sciences.

She spent lots of her time working or doing research.

She also bought a guitar, and she said she didn't have a lot of time to play it, but it just made her feel like she had a friend in her apartment.

Yingying went to Turner Hall on campus that morning of June 9th.

to sign an apartment lease.

So she was living on the south end of campus, what they call the married student housing complex.

She was looking to move to the One North Apartments because it would be less expensive.