A Purdue University student will be charged with murder after his roommate was killed at a campus residence in Indiana, according to the school’s police chief.
Ji Min “Jimmy” Sha, an international student from Korea who majored in cybersecurity, called 911 around 12:45 a.m. to alert police to the death, Purdue University Police Chief Lesley Wiete said during a Wednesday morning news conference.
Details of that call were not released, but authorities said the incident took place in a room on the first floor of McCutcheon Hall.
The Tippecanoe County coroner’s office and chief identified the slain student as Varun Manish Chheda, a 20-year-old senior from Indianapolis studying data science.
Chheda died of “multiple acute force traumatic injuries” and the manner of death was a homicide, according to preliminary autopsy results.
Final autopsy findings are pending toxicology, the coroner’s office said.
Wiete said Sha, 22, was taken into custody minutes after the 911 call and transported to the police station for further investigation. She has not yet been booked, according to the boss.
Following Chheda’s death, school officials said there was no threat to the community.
Wiete did not discuss the motive or details about the possible weapons, but said the 911 call came from the room and only Chheda and Sha were there at the time.
“I think this was unprovoked and unprovoked,” he said, noting that none of the roommates were asleep when the incident occurred.
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When asked why Sha made the 911 call, Wiete said, “He’s the one who made the call and alerted us to the situation.”
Chheda’s death marked the first homicide on the Purdue campus since January 2014, police said.
Purdue President Mitch Daniels called the news “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.”
Purdue has about 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled for the fall semester, according to its website.
Staff in residence halls and doctors with the school’s counseling and psychological services are providing support to students in need, he said in a statement Wednesday morning.
Daniels assured everyone that the campus is safe. “Compared to cities in Purdue’s population (approximately 60,000 total), we experience a small fraction of violent and property crime that occurs elsewhere,” he said.
“Such statistics are no consolation on a day like this,” he added. “A death on our campus and among our Purdue family deeply affects each of us.”
Chheda had attended Park Tudor School, confirmed Dennis Bisgaard, the acting principal of the school.
“The entire Park Tudor community is incredibly saddened by the tragic loss of Varun Chheda, Park Tudor Class of 2020. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this difficult time,” he said.
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