The Kidnapping of Yingying Zhang

Brendt Christensen from Champaign, Illinois is a former physics graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He made national headlines when he was charged by the FBI for the disappearance of a young Chinese woman.

Yingying was a visiting scholar in the United States from China. She has not been seen since she got into a vehicle at a bus stop on the University of Illinois at Urbana– Champaign grounds on June 9, 2017. On June 30, 2017, the FBI captured and charged Brendt Christensen with abducting Zhang. Based on proof revealed during the examination, law enforcement authorities said they believed Zhang was no longer alive.

On the evening of June 9, 2017, Zhang was going on a Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District bus in Urbana, Illinois, to an off-grounds apartment unit where she was intending to sign a rental lease. She was running late and sent a text message to the renting clerk at 1:39 p.m. to inform them that she would touch base at roughly 2:10 p.m. After riding on one transport, she got off at 1:52 p.m. and tried to transfer to another bus. She was not able to find the location of the next stop because of her confusion, she tried to flag another bus down but was not able to. That was the last time she was seen.