Jiffan Don was only a few months at the University of Utah when he issued the first warning. She told the housing director of the college’s housing department that her ex-boyfriend, who lived in the same dorm building, attacked her. A motel room in downtown Salt Lake City.
Two days after the assault on January 12, Dong (19) told the coach that he was worried about former Haoyu Wan (26). Relationship with assault.
Both Mr. Dong and Mr. Wang were international students from China, but they never returned to Japan alive. Mr. Don was found dead in the motel’s room about a month after calling Mr. Wang to the police.
In a document released this week, the university admitted that it mishandled some of Don’s fatal warning signs. The document contains text messages, emails, and internal reports showing staff in the college’s housing department who were late in telling campus police that Mr. Don was attacked.
Paper trails reveal college failures, but fill the void of what happened to Don in the last few weeks of her life when she was absent from class and stopped staying in the dorm room. Not. At risk and far from home, a glimpse of her experience is a few vague text messages sent from the phone that refuse to help the school and “rest”. I said it was necessary.
A few days later, on February 11, police found Don dead next to Mr. Wang in a motel room in downtown Salt Lake City. Wang emailed a member of the university’s housing staff that morning that he had been killed by injecting heroin into him. In March he was charged with murder.
The Salt Lake Tribune had been seeking records related to the case for months, and newspapers were given by the court to allow the university access to a campus police report filed after Mr. Don was reported missing. He said he had set a deadline for July 28th. Instead, the university has released over 100 pages of documentation.
According to the document, after Mr. Don first told college housing staff about the assault on a motel room on January 14, they were late to involve other groups, including campus police and college action intervention teams. .. According to the university timeline, it took three weeks for these groups to get involved, even though they couldn’t contact Mr. Don until February 6 while the housing staff were on the phone or visiting the dorm room. It took more than that.
At that time, the staff visited Mr. Wang’s dormitory room once. According to the document, he was scheduled for counseling that day, January 24, and told them that no further help was needed.
A few days later, a staff member called another student, Wang Haoyu, but didn’t realize he was the wrong person. As a result, officials did not report the ex-boyfriend missing, even though he saw his access card unused in the dorm building for seven days.
The university said its shortcomings included staff delays, the need for better training and processes in housing, and “insufficient and unprofessional” internal communication. The school said these problems had been resolved.
Taylor Randall, president of the university, said:
“I trusted the University of Utah for my daughter’s safety and betrayed it,” said Don’s parents, Jun-hwan Shen and Min Shen-dong, on Friday.
“They knew that Ziffan was in serious danger, but couldn’t protect her when she needed it most,” the parents said. “We don’t want her death to be wasted.”
Don’s roommate said on February 6th that he was worried because he hadn’t seen him for more than a week. The next day, officials determined that Mr. Don had not swiped the access card for her building since January 28th.
On February 8, homeowners organized a meeting with the university’s behavioral intervention team and submitted a report of the missing person to campus police. It was the first time the University of Utah police station was contacted about the assault on a motel room on January 12.
That day, the policeman spoke to Mr. Don on a video call. She showed the police the motel room where she said she was staying, but she didn’t say where it was and she refused to meet them. Police tried to find her using a ping from Don’s cell phone, but she failed after visiting seven hotels in downtown Salt Lake City. Don agreed to meet the homekeeper on campus on February 11th.
According to the document, on February 10, the homekeeper spoke on the phone with Mr. Wang, who said he was angry with his arrest in January and his reputation as a “domestic abuser.” Mr. Don had been given a temporary protection order for the January 12 assault, but the school was not notified.
In an email sent at 3:51 am on February 11, Mr. Wang told the house manager that he was planning to commit suicide by killing Mr. Dong with drugs purchased on the Internet. A Salt Lake City police detective said in a statement that he was believed to have found Mr. Don dead when a policeman broke into the motel room where Mr. Wang was registered as a registered guest from February 3. rice field.
Years before Don was killed, the University of Utah raised concerns raised by another student, Lauren McCluskey, 21, who was fatally shot in 2018 by a man she had been dating for several weeks. He said he didn’t handle it properly.
Don’s parents are represented by the same law firm as McCluskey’s parents, who accused the school of taking no action after her daughter sought help from the authorities. They reached a $ 13.5 million settlement with the university in 2020.
Brian Stewart, a lawyer representing Don’s parents, said on Friday, “Despite repeated reports of the real risks she faced, the university will take the necessary steps to prevent Ziffan’s murder. I couldn’t do it. “
“We can’t allow colleges to continue making the same mistakes with the same tragic consequences, especially after proclaiming that they learned from the death of Lauren McCluskey,” Stewart said.
Jesus Jimenez Contribution report.