Courtroom Testimonies Revisit Yale Murder

A tow truck driver, a police sergeant, a scrapyard security guard, and an eyewitness to an East Rock murder all gathered in a fifth-floor courtroom to recount what they saw and heard in the immediate aftermath of one of New Haven’s most notorious recent homicides.

That was the scene Monday morning and afternoon in Courtroom 5A at the state courthouse at 235 Church St.

State Superior Court Judge Jon Alander presided over a probable cause hearing for defendant Qinxuan Pan, a 31-year-old former MIT artificial intelligence researcher who has been arrested and charged with murdering 26-year-old Yale grad student Kevin Jiang near Jiang’s fiancee’s apartment on Lawrence Street in East Rock on Feb. 6, 2021. U.S. Marshals later arrested Pan, who remains incarcerated on a $20 million bond, on May 13 of that year in Montgomery, Ala. after a three-month, nationwide manhunt.

Monday’s hearing marked the first substantive courtroom review of Pan’s case in months, bringing together in person before the judge several of the key witnesses and law enforcement personnel first mentioned in Pan’s 96-page arrest warrant.

Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Stacey Miranda and Assistant State’s Attorney Kelly Davis called a total of five witnesses to the stand in an effort to convince the judge that Pan more likely than not committed the murder he’s been charged with. If the judge finds that that is the case, then the state will be able to continue on with the criminal case and eventually try Pan on that murder charge before a jury.

Pan’s probable cause hearing is slated to continue in the same Church Street courtroom Tuesday morning.

As Jiang’s mom sat in the front pew behind the prosecuting attorneys, quietly sobbing as court-appointed victim advocates and friends and members of a local Chinese Baptist church consoled her, Miranda and Davis questioned five different witnesses between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break in between. 

Temporarily freed from his handcuffs, wearing a bright yellow prison jumpsuit and frequently scribbling down and poring over notes on a yellow legal pad before him, Pan sat nearby next to his defense attorney, Kevin Smith, who was dressed all in black and who calmly and gently cross-examined each witness after the prosecutors had finished.

Murder Witness: "It Replays In My Head Almost Every Day"

The first witness called by the prosecution was a Yale microbiology graduate student named Nicole, who lives on Lawrence Street and who saw the February 2021 murder take place outside of her second-floor apartment window.

She told Davis that she and a friend were celebrating her friend’s birthday. It was snowing out, they had ordered takeout, and were about to watch a movie. Before starting the movie, as Nicole was showing her friend a few PowerPoint slides for a school-related presentation, ​“we heard some gunshots.”

She didn’t immediately recognize the loud popping noises as gunshots. She figured those sounds were instead the more familiar backfiring of motorcycles racing somewhere nearby.

Then ​“I heard someone scream out in pain,” Nicole said. ​“I went out to the window and I saw a murder happening.”

What exactly did you see when you looked out your apartment’s second-floor window? Davis asked.

Nicole said she saw a man lying on the ground on Lawrence Street near the intersection with Nicoll Street. She saw a second man standing over him ​“with a gun, shooting him.” She saw flashes of light burst from the gun after each shot.

Did you see anyone else outside in that area at that time? Davis asked. Anyone besides the man on the ground being shot and besides the man shooting down at him? No, Nicole replied.

The witness said she couldn’t see the shooter’s face clearly. She saw he was wearing long sleeves, long pants, and a winter hat. After he finished shooting, Nicole said, the shooter hesitated for a second, then got back in a dark SUV, which she later realized was a GMC Terrain.

How did you later realize that car was a GMC Terrain? Davis asked.

Because of the distinctive taillights, Nicole said. She said she saw another GMC Terrain on her block after the murder. When she saw that unrelated car’s taillights light up, she started crying, she said, with the shock of recognition of the same model of car so closely affiliated with such a traumatic memory.

Nicole said the shooter turned the SUV around, drove down Lawrence Street towards State Street, leaving behind him the murdered man in the street and a Toyota Prius parked nearby with its hazard lights on and with a missing bumper. As she saw East Rock neighbors begin to pour out onto the block to see what had happened and how they could help, she called 911 and soon thereafter was interviewed by city police about what she saw.

Smith asked Nicole how many gunshots she heard. She said she heard a ​“handful,” maybe three or four, before she heard the victim screaming in pain. Then she heard another shot after the scream. And when she got to the window, she saw the shooter fire two more shots,

Isn’t it true that you told the cops that night that you weren’t sure if the shooter was a man or a woman? Smith asked.

Yes, Nicole said. But she now believes that ​“it probably was a man based on the height and build.” 

“I was pretty shaken up” when she gave her first statement to the police, Nicole said, and was reluctant to identify the shooter as a man or woman without having clearly seen them or met them. With a bit of hindsight, she said, she’s confident the shooter was a man. 

She said she is also much clearer now on which door of the SUV the shooter opened and entered the vehicle in before departing the scene. When she first spoke with the cops, she said she wasn’t sure whether it was the driver’s side or passenger’s side. She’s now confident that it was the driver’s side.

“It replays in my head almost every day,” she said about the murder.

But you could not definitively tell the court whether or not there was anyone else in that SUV after the shooter got back in? Smith asked. That’s right, Nicole said. She didn’t see anyone else, but she couldn’t see into the car.

And you couldn’t identify the shooter himself? Smith continued.

“I did not see the face,” Nicole said about the shooter.

New Haven Police Officer Casey O’Brien was the second witness called to the stand Monday morning by the prosecution.

A 13-year NHPD veteran, O’Brien was one of the patrol officers to respond to Lawrence and Nicoll the night of the Feb. 6, 2021 shooting at around 8:35 p.m.

He told Miranda that the New Haven Fire Department, an American Medical Response ambulance crew, and multiple other officers were already on scene when he arrived.

O’Brien said that he saw in the middle of Lawrence Street a man with ​“multiple gunshot wounds to his head” and ​“bleeding heavily.” The medical crew pronounced the man dead on the scene.

O’Brien said he also saw ​“multiple shell casings and a backpack” nearby. That ​“military-style backpack” had Kevin Jiang’s last name on it. And about 30 feet away, he saw the Prius with its hazard lights on. He soon found out it was registered to Jiang.

After securing the crime scene, O’Brien proceeded to knock on neighbors’ doors and interview three people on the block. One of those Lawrence Street residents showed O’Brien surveillance footage from his house that partly captured the crime taking place. That video, part of which was played aloud in court on Monday, included what sounded like the SUV rear-ending the Toyota Prius, O’Brien said. It then shows the two cars drive into view of the camera, and then out of view of the camera, before including the noises of two or three shots, screams of pain, followed by four or five additional shots.

Scrapyard Security Guard: Pan's Hand-Across-Throat Motion Meant, "Stop Bothering Me."

Third up on Monday was Joseph Cusano, a security guard at Sim’s scrap metal yard in North Haven.

Cusano was working a night shift at the scrapyard on Feb. 6, 2021 when someone driving a dark GMC Terrain SUV drove through the 5‑acre scrapyard’s half-closed gates.

“I at first thought it was a food delivery driver” looking to drop off a meal for one of the half-dozen workers still on site at that time of night, which was soon before 9 p.m., he said. But when the car didn’t turn around and come out through the front gate through which it entered, Cusano knew something was up — or, at the very least, the driver was lost.

Which happens all the time, Cusano said. Cars often get turned around, and part of his job is directing them out of the yard and to wherever they’re looking to go.

Cusano’s saw the SUV’s taillights on ​“way, way back” in the junkyard where there’s nothing but piles of metal and a gate leading to railroad tracks.

Cusano remembered driving up to the SUV and trying to tell the driver that he needed to leave through the same way he accidentally came in.

“He ignored me. He wouldn’t look at me. He just sped off,” Cusano said.

But then the SUV headed in the wrong direction again, and again was unable to get out of the scrapyard. When the SUV turned around, Cusano’s car and the SUV found themselves facing each other 10 or 15 apart. 

That meant that Cusano could see directly through the windshield of his car into the SUV 15 feet away, and the driver of the SUV — a man Cusano identified as ​“Asian” but was otherwise unable to provide any identifying characteristics for — could look directly through his car’s windshield and at Cusano himself.

Cusano said he was ​“pretty agitated” at the time, and was gesturing with his arm and hand in the direction of the scrapyard’s exit, telling the driver he had to go. 

In response, Cusano said, the driver of the SUV lifted his hand and drew it sideways across his neck.

What did you take that hand motion to mean? Davis asked Cusano.

“I took it to mean: Stop bothering me,” Cusano replied. He said ​“the hairs on the back of my neck stood up” as he realized ​“something was not right with this” driver. Under Smith’s cross-examination, Cusano said he couldn’t remember if the man was wearing a hat or glasses, even though he could see the man ​“clearly” through his windshield.

The driver of the SUV then maneuvered around Cusano’s car, headed to the back of the lot, and managed to drive through another half-opened gate — only to get his car stuck on the adjoining railroad tracks.

That’s when Cusano called 911, and soon found himself talking with a North Haven police officer.

That responding officer was North Haven Police Sgt. Jeffrey James Mills, a 31-year veteran of the North Haven Police Department.

Mills told the prosecutors and defense attorney that he and a fellow North Haven officer responded to the security guard’s 911 call about a suspicious vehicle entering the scrapyard and then getting stuck on the railroad tracks.

Mills told Miranda that he responded to the 911 call at around 8:59 p.m., and was not aware at the time that a murder had just taken place nearby in New Haven. He said he wouldn’t learn about that crime until later in the night.

When he arrived at the scrapyard, Mills said, he found the GMC Terrain SUV stuck on the railroad tracks. The driver ​“was trying to get the vehicle off the tracks,” but in vain. ​“He was stuck.”

The driver, whom Mills identified as Pan based on his Massachusetts driver’s license and his AAA card, ​“indicated he was lost,” Mills said. 

Mills ran the commercial Connecticut license plate on the vehicle and quickly found out that that license plate had been identified by the Town of Newington as stolen or lost. 

After initially indicating to the cops that he owned the SUV, Mills recalled, Pan then ​“paused and said it was a rental.” Pan provided ​“no definitive answer” as to why the car he was driving had a lost or stolen license plate. He also failed to provide a rental agreement for the car.

Mills told Pan that he’d need to call a tow agency to get his car off the train tracks. And because the car was not registered to Pan and because Pan didn’t have enough cash on him to pay to hold onto the vehicle that night, Mills said, he recommended Pan spend the night instead at the Best Western hotel on Washington Avenue in North Haven and then pay for and pick up his towed car in the morning. Pan agreed, and so the cops called for a tow truck. That tow truck driver than picked up Pan’s car and gave Pan himself a ride to the Best Western as a North Haven cop followed behind him.

Before leaving the scene entirely, Mills recalled, he looked in Pan’s car and saw two bags: a ​“soft leather briefcase” and a blue shopping bag from Malden, Mass.

An hour or two later that same night, Mills said, his department got a call from a local police department in Mansfield, Mass. letting them know that the car Pan had been driving in North Haven had been stolen out of Massachusetts. 

The next morning, Mills said, he and two fellow North Haven police officers responded to the Arby’s restaurant right next door to the Best Western.

They went out there because several Arby’s employees had found in the parking lot a few bags with a .45-caliber gun, boxes of ammunition, a few loaded magazines, and several other items. Under cross-examination from Smith, Mills said that he later learned that that gun is not the weapon used to kill Jiang.

When the cops arrived at the restaurant, the gun and ammo were laid out on a table for the officers to see. 

That’s when Mills saw a black leather bag and a blue shopping bag from Malden, Mass. — ​“and it instantly hit me. ​‘Oh, these are the bags from the back of the truck,’ ” he recalled, thinking back to his encounter the night before with Pan in the scrapyard.

Mills and his colleagues then went to the Best Western hotel in search of Pan. They were informed by the front desk workers that Pan had checked in to his hotel room the night before. But by the time they got to the room itself, cleaning staff at the hotel told the cops that it looked like no one had spent the night there. According to the front desk, Pan had never checked out.

Smith asked Mills if he saw any blood or fluids in the SUV when he spoke with Pan in the scrapyard the night before.

No, Mills replied. 

“Anything lead you to believe there was gunshot residue in the car?”

No, Mills said.

Smith also pressed the North Haven police sergeant on a traffic stop that Mills had seen a state police officer make in near the Arby’s and Best Western later on the same night after the tow truck driver had dropped off Pan at the hotel. Mills said the state police told him that that was just a routine traffic stop, and that it took place several dozen yards away from where the bags with the gun and ammo were found by the Arby’s employees.

The last witness to take the stand on Monday was Nicholas Johnson, a tow truck driver from the North Haven-based Nelcon towing and recovery.

Johnson told Miranda that he was the one to retrieve the SUV from the train tracks near Sim’s metal yard on the night of Feb. 6, 2021, and he was the one to drive Pan to the Best Western on Washington Avenue.

Johnson said that the car was sideways across two sets of railroad tracks when he found it. It had two flat front tires and damage to the front bumper.

He said that Pan didn’t explain how or why he got his car stuck on the train tracks as he rode in the passenger seat of the flatbed tow truck on the way to the hotel. Johnson did describe Pan as ​“overly polite,” ending nearly every sentence with a ​“thank you, sir.”

When they got to the hotel, Johnson asked Pan if he needed him to retrieve anything from the towed car. Pan said yes, and, as Johnson went to retrieve Pan’s bags, Pan ​“jumped on the bed [of the truck] two or three times.” Johnson told him that it was too dangerous for Pan to climb up on the bed of the truck and get his own belongings, and therefore to get down from the truck and wait for Johnson to get the bags for him. Each time, Pan said yes, got down from the truck, and then jumped right back up again to try to get his own bags.

Ultimately, Johnson said, he ​“grabbed [Pan] by the back of his shirt” to pull him down from the truck — and then handed Pan the two or three bags he had been trying to get for himself.

“You could tell there was something heavy in the bags,” Johnson said. Though he never looked inside, and the bags were closed.

Did Pan ever try to escape as Johnson drove him in his tow truck to the hotel? Smith asked.

No, Johnson replied.

And what was his demeanor? Smith continued.

“He was very polite,” Johnson repeated. ​“Overly polite.”

Previous articles about Jiang’s murder and Pan’s arrest.

Yale Murder Suspect Declared ​“Competent”
Yale Murder Suspect To Receive ​“Competency Exam“
Yale Murder Case Continued To September
14 Months Later, ​“Justice Needs To Be Done”
Yale Murder Case Continued Again
Yale Murder Case Continued To February As Pan Seeks Evidence Access
Yale Murder Case Continued To December While Pan Reviews Evidence In Prison Library
Norm Pattis Takes On Yale Murder Case
Judge Keeps Pan’s Bond At $20M
Wrong-Race Dispatch Recording Released
New Details Emerge On Why Cop Let Pan Go
Warrant Ties Pan To Other Local Shootings; North Haven Cops Ran Stolen Plate
Alleged Murderer’s Parents Show Support
Pan’s Bail Set At $20M
Kevin Jiang’s Alleged Murderer Arrested
New Warrant Charges Pan With Murder
$10K Reward Posted For Pan Info
Pain, Shock, Anger, Love Mix At Memorial Service
Car Dealerships Called For Help In Pan Manhunt
Pan Knew Murder Victim’s Fiancee; North Haven Chief Defends Letting Him Go; $5K Reward Posted
MIT AI Researcher Sought For Questioning In Yale Graduate Student’s Murder
Vigil Call: ​“All Lives Are Sacred”
Murder Cut Short Romance Nurtured In Nature
Murdered Student May Have Been ​“Targeted”