Indian-Origin Student Sexually Assaulted, Strangled to Death in US

The student was assaulted after she refused to acknowledge Thurman’s catcalls, the prosecutors said.

Donald Thurman has been charged in the strangulation of a student.

(Photo: AP)

A 19-year-old Indian-American student was sexually assaulted and then strangulated to death at the University of Illinois in Chicago on 23 November, the police said about a brutal murder that has shaken the US community, according to PTI.

According to the prosecutors, the student was choke-hold by her assailant until she passed out after she refused to acknowledge his catcalls when she was walking from the campus to the parking garage early Saturday.

She was then dragged to the back seat of her car and sexually assaulted, they added.

The gruesome details emerged during a bail hearing of the 26-year-old assailant Donald Thurman, charged with first-degree murder and criminal sexual assault of the student.

The prosecutors told the court on Tuesday that Thurman had confessed to the crime and it ordered he be held without bail.

‘She Was the Light of Our Family’

Originally hailing from Hyderabad, the victim was a sophomore and Kinesiology major at the University of Illinois.

Family members who live in Hyderabad said that her parents had migrated to the US over 30 years ago and she was born and brought up there, The News Minute reported.

The victim's family fondly remembered her and said in a statement that she was "the beloved baby of the family,"

“She was the light of our family and the best of all of us. She was wise beyond her years and now she is gone too soon,” her sister wrote on her Facebook page, according to The News Minute.

However, the family said they hold no hatred towards the perpetrator and hoped that no girl would be harmed this way.

Expressing his condolences, UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis said in a statement that the campus community has shed many tears over the last three days. “But our collective pain pales in comparison with the ordeal her family is and will be going through for days, months and years to come,” Amiridis added.

The accused, was released on parole after he served two years of his six years of imprisonment for a 2015 armed robbery conviction. His next court appearance has been set for 16 December.

(With inputs from PTI and The News Minute.)