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Columbus police arrested an 18year-old man yesterday and charged him with
murder in the slaying of a woman who was shot Thursday at the Colony Square
Apartments.
Evidence and witness accounts led police to Tyson Brooks, who was arrested at his North Side home at 2170 Lisa Dr., police said.
Police would not elaborate. Nor would they discuss a possible motive for the killing of Xiaoying Wu, although detective Mike McCann had said Thursday that it might have been an attempted carjacking.
Gwen DeJarnett, who lives across the street from Brooks, said his parents divorced about seven years ago and his mother had raised him and two siblings. "He's always been mannerable,'' DeJarnett said. "But he also has a dark side to him.''
Brooks was in the Franklin County jail last night.
At the Colony Square Apartments yesterday, tears welled in the eyes of Chiu-Mei Yu as she talked about the 6- year-old son of her friend Wu.
"I don't think he understands. His father is distraught. We just don't understand why this happened,'' Yu said.
Wu, 37, who lived in the apartments at 680 Riverview Dr., was accosted about 1:40 p.m. Thursday as she was getting into the passenger seat of a friend's car in the parking lot behind the complex.
McCann said the two were on their way to shop for groceries when the man jumped into the back seat.
Wu was shot in the neck. The other woman, whom McCann would not name, was not injured. Nothing was taken from the car.
Wu's friend told McCann that the man said something when he jumped in the car but they did not understand him.
"In China it's against the law to carry guns, so something like this is very shocking to us. We're not used to this type of violence,'' said a friend of Wu's who did not want her name published.
Wu, a native of Guangzhou in south China, came to the United States about eight years ago. She followed her husband, Baocheng Pan, who had arrived a year earlier, friends said.
Wu had a bachelor's degree in computer science from Franklin University. Pan received a doctorate in biophysics from Ohio State University in 1996. He is employed as a research associate in the university's Chemistry Department.
Wu's friends described her as an outgoing person who could make friends with anyone and loved motherhood. She was staying home to care for William, the couple's son, and had talked about returning to college for a master's degree.
William was in class at Cranbrook Elementary when school officials learned that his mother had died at Riverside Methodist Hospitals, said Lois Camealy, who was acting principal that day.
They kept the boy at school until his father could pick him up, Camealy said. "It wasn't upsetting to him at all because he was playing with the other children. There were quite a few of his friends there.''
Yu said a memorial service is being planned, but details will not be worked out until Wu's family arrives from China.
A similar shooting occurred at the complex in August, said Craig Cook, resident manager.
A man was shot in the stomach by a gunman who tried to take his car, but he survived, Cook said. "That set the community on its heels, because an incident like that had never happened here before.''
Cook said more than 80 percent of the Colony Square residents are foreign-born students and professionals. Since Wu's slaying, he has received calls from residents who want to get together to discuss safety concerns, he said.
OSU holds an orientation session for international students on safety issues, both on campus and off, each academic quarter, said John Greisberger, assistant vice president and director of international education at the university.
He said the session includes a presentation by the OSU Police Department.
"Students have told me that Columbus is safer than other cities, but they have stereotypes of America and Americans in terms of violence,'' Greisberger said.
Columbus police would welcome the opportunity to meet with residents in the Riverview Drive area, said Sgt. Earl Smith, a division spokesman. "We routinely do personal-safety and residential-security training for communities.''
"I was just shocked that something like this could happen during the day,'' said Lilly Anastassova, 36, a native of Bulgaria who has lived in Colony Square for six years.
"I was never concerned about living here, that's why we stayed so long.''
Dispatch reporters Dean Narciso and Kirk Richards contributed to this story.