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Consul General Hong Lei Met with UIUC and Police Regarding the Missing Case of Chinese Visiting Scholar Yingying Zhang
2017-06-26 23:25

On June 26, Consul General Hong Lei made a visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (hereinafter referred to as UIUC) to meet with university leaders and police, with Deputy Consul General Yu Peng in company.

In the meeting with University Chancellor Robert Jones and Deputy Chancellor Robin Kaler, Hong Lei said that since Ms. Yingying Zhang went missing, the university has given a lot of attention and support, especially the university has made very detailed arrangements for Ms. Yingying Zhang’s families’ visit and stay after they arrived in the U.S., which rendered the families strong support. The university police UIDP and FBI have made this case a priority and carried out investigation with all out efforts. Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai asked me to send his sincere thanks to the university, police and FBI. It has been 17 days since Ms. Yingying Zhang went missing. Her families have been under a lot of stress and anxiety, and this case has aroused wide concerns among Chinese overseas students, their parents, overseas Chinese communities and all Chinese people in China. We hope that the university keeps supporting the investigation and case solving to ensure that Ms. Yingying Zhang come back to her families as soon as possible.

Chancellor Jones expressed his thanks to Ambassador Cui Tiankai for his attention to the case and Consul General Hong Lei’s visit to the university. Chancellor Jones said that this is the first case of malicious kidnapping in forty years since he started his teaching career. The university and himself have given a lot of attention to this case. The university has already and will continue to mobilize all resources to provide support to Ms. Yingying Zhang’s families. It will further raise the society’s awareness of the case through media and encourage the public to contribute clues. The university will request the police to invest in their full efforts and keep moving forward their investigation. Ms. Yingying Zhang is a family member of UIUC and he hopes she would come back to the big family as soon as possible.

While meeting with the Deputy Chief of Police of UIDP Matt Myrick,Consul General Hong Lei thanked him for the manpower, attention and time that the police put into the investigation of Ms. Yingying Zhang’s case, as well as their diligent work. Consul General Hong Lei said that the case investigation is at a critical point and he hopes the university police could work with FBI to continue amplifying their investigation efforts and applying advanced technological means to make early breakthrough.

Deputy Chief of Police Marik Myrick said that the missing of Ms. Yingying Zhang is the most important case of the university police, and the police have been working on the case day in and day out to attain more clues. The police wouldn’t stop working until the case solved.

Consul General Hong Lei visited Ms. Yingying Zhang's families in UIUC and wished the families could remain strong and take good care of themselves.

During the stay in UIUC, Consul General Hong Lei visited the scene where Ms. Yingying Zhang went missing accompanied by UIUC Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) members. He complemented the CSSA for the amount of work they have done in the beginning phase and wished they could continue playing their important role to help Ms. Yingying Zhang’s families and assist the case investigation. The member students said that they would continuously spare no efforts to mobilize the Chinese students on campus to work on finding Ms. Yingying Zhang.

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