A Purdue University student has been identified as the suspect in the murder of his roommate.
Gji Min Sha, 22, is facing preliminary murder charges in the death of his roommate Varun Manish Chheda, 20, who was found dead inside his McCutcheon Hall bedroom shortly after midnight Wednesday morning. .
Residents in the hall say they were woken up in the middle of the night by a ‘scream or some loud noises’.
Purdue University Police Department Chief Lesley Wiete said she believes the killing was “unprovoked and senseless.”
Sha was identified as a third-year cybersecurity student who attended the school as an international student from South Korea.
An autopsy has not yet been performed on Chheda, and Wiete says police have not confirmed the cause of death or whether a weapon was used.
Sha has not been booked into the Tippecanoe County Jail, although Capt. Song Kang expects this to be done later Wednesday.
Purdue University police responded to a call at the McCutcheon Hall residential building to find 20-year-old Varun Manish Chheda dead inside his bedroom.
Police Chief Lesley Wiete said Chheda’s roommate, 22-year-old Gji Min Sha, was arrested as the prime suspect in Chheda’s murder. He faces preliminary murder charges.
Pictured: The Purdue University campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. Chheda’s death is the first murder at the school since 2014, when Andrew Boldt was shot and stabbed by Cody Cousins.
Sha made a call to campus police at 12:44 a.m., Tim Doty, Purdue’s director of media and public relations, told the Indianapolis Star.
Sha, who called himself ‘Jimmy’, was arrested minutes after police arrived at the first-floor residence. Wiete said there was no threat to the campus once Sha was taken into custody.
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Chheda, who graduated from Park Tudor Private School in Indianapolis, was 10 days shy of her 21st birthday.
“The entire Park Tudor community is incredibly saddened by the tragic loss of Varun Chheda, Park Tudor Class of 2020,” said Dennis Bisgaard, Acting Head of Park Tudor School in a statement. “Our prayers are with his family at this difficult time.”
According to a Facebook post, Chheda was a semifinalist in the National Merit Scholarship Program in 2020. She was in her final year in data science at Purdue, Wiete said.
Other residents on the first floor of McCutcheon Hall have been relocated elsewhere, police said.
The last homicide on the school’s campus was in January 2014, when Cody Cousins, a computer engineering teaching assistant, was sentenced for the murder of Andrew Boldt, an electrical engineering student.
Cousins, then 24, entered the school’s Electrical Engineering Building with a gun and knife before shooting and stabbing Boldt, then 21. Cousins told police that he had no motive in the crime.
“Our hearts go out to the victim and his family and friends and anyone who knew him and anyone who touched him in his life,” Wiete said.
“This is extremely sad and unfortunate for us today and I can’t even imagine what his family is going through right now.”
In an email sent to students, college president Mitchell Daniels said school staff prioritize student safety.
“This is as tragic an event as we can imagine happening on our campus and our hearts and thoughts go out to everyone affected by this terrible event,” he wrote.
Source: https://wikisoon.com/
