The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on Monday launched Yingying's Fund, an endowment fund in the name of slain Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying.
With funds raised through a GoFundMe campaign, Zhang's family provided the lead 30,000 dollars to Yingying's Fund. As of Monday, more than 475 people have contributed an additional 27,000 to the campaign since it was announced earlier this month, local media reported.
The fund will be used to help international students in crisis and their families, UIUC spokeswoman Robin Kaler was quoted as saying.
"We hope that future international students and their families will be able to receive financial support and assistance when they encounter emergencies, so that they will not be as helpless as we felt when we first arrived in the United States," Zhang Ronggao, Zhang's father, said at a news conference held on Monday.
The father described his daughter as being kind-hearted and always ready to help when the others are in need. He called for donations to the fund, saying this will be the "most appropriate memorial of Zhang Yingying".
Zhang Yingying, then a visiting scholar at UIUC, went missing on June 9, 2017, after getting into a black Saturn Astra in a hurry to sign a lease for an apartment. On June 30, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers arrested Brendt Christensen, charging him with kidnapping resulting in Zhang's death and two counts of making false statements to FBI agents.
A 12-member jury unanimously ruled that Christensen was guilty of all three charges against him on June 24, but failed to reach a unanimous decision on whether Christensen should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
Judge James Shadid sentenced Christensen to life imprisonment without the possibility of release in a federal court of Peoria in the U.S. state of Illinois on July 18.
