phd student stalked killed ex boyfriend

PhD student stalked, killed ex-boyfriend in Southwest DC home, police say

WASHINGTON (FOX NEWS) - A Chicago Ph.D. student studying criminology fatally shot her ex-boyfriend at his Southwest DC  home, authorities said.

Nijinsky Dix, 37, a student at the University of Illinois Chicago, has been charged with second-degree murder in the slaying Saturday of 44-year-old Terry Hickman, whom she dated for three months, the South Bend Tribune reported.

READ MORE: Jose Rodriguez Cruz plead guilty to 1989 murder of estranged wife

Shortly before 5:30 p.m., police responded to reports of gunfire at the apartment complex in the nation’s capital.

They found Dix kneeling beside the bullet-riddled body of Hickman, who was pronounced dead at the scene, the outlet reported.

Police said Dix was holding in her left hand a gun, which officers ordered her to put down.

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She was also on speakerphone with someone, who identified themselves to authorities as her mother, the Tribune reported.

Her mother told officers that Dix called her and said, “He pushed me, and I shot him.”

Dix was taken to the hospital, where she complained of memory loss and back pain but showed no signs of being assaulted, NBC Chicago reported.

READ MORE: DC police investigating after woman killed in Southeast triple shooting

When questioned about the incident, Dix cited her memory problems and asked them for information that could help jog her recollection, the outlet reported.

They showed her a photo of Hickman, which prompted Dix to cry and repeatedly shout, “Get it away from me,” the report said.

Hickman’s family told authorities that he and Dix had dated for three months before the pair broke up in May, the outlet reported. They claimed that Dix had started “stalking” her former flame after the split.

It’s unclear how or why Dix ended up in Washington, DC.

She has been pursuing a doctorate in criminology, law and justice in Chicago, while also working as an employee at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where she’s the director of a talent search program, according to the colleges.

Notre Dame said they’re “aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” the outlets reported.

Dix also faces charges for possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of an unregistered firearm, police said.

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PhD Student Accused Of Stalking Her Ex-Boyfriend, Gunning Him Down In His Apartment

“You don’t do people you love like that, that’s not love, I don’t want that, he can’t do people like that,” Nijinsky Dix allegedly told police after authorities said she fatally shot Terry Hickman.

A Chicago PhD student has been accused of stalking and fatally shooting her ex-boyfriend five times in his Washington, D.C. apartment Saturday.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, is now facing charges of second-degree murder, possession of an unregistered firearm and possession of unregistered ammunition, in the death of 44-year-old Terry Hickman, according to a public incident report obtained by Oxygen.com .

Metropolitan Police officers were called to the apartment complex where Hickman lived just before 5:30 p.m. Saturday after receiving calls about a woman with a gun and shots being fired in the area, according to an affidavit in the case obtained by Oxygen.com .

Officers identified the shots had come from Hickman’s apartment and arrived to hear a woman inside screaming for help. The woman—later identified as Dix—refused to open the locked door but officers were able to gain entry to the apartment using a master key from the apartment complex.

After entering the apartment, officers saw Hickman “lying face down on the floor” with Hix “kneeling” at his feet with a handgun in her left hand, according to the court documents.

Officers also heard a voice coming from a nearby cell phone, which had been put on speaker phone. The person on the other end of the phone identified herself as Dix’s mother and allegedly told officers that her daughter had called her and told her, “He pushed me, and I shot him,” the affidavit stated.

Along with the cell phone, officers also recovered Dix’s Florida driver’s license and an employee ID card from the University of Notre Dame, where she had been working.

Emergency responders tried to revive Hickman, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy would later reveal that he had been shot five times: once in the back of the head, once to the left cheek, twice in the neck and once in the left arm, according to the court documents.

Dix was transported to a local hospital where she was evaluated for possible injuries. Medical staff reported Dix—who police described as “upset and despondent”—had a left abrasion to the inside of her lower left lip. It was not clear how she received the injury.

Dix also complained of back pain, but the doctor who examined her said she did not say what had caused the pain.

Dix allegedly told the doctor that she had “blacked out” for a period of time, but the doctor was unsure what would have caused a loss of memory and said she found no signs of physical trauma or assault when examining Dix.

After Dix was released from the hospital and brought to the police station, authorities said she continued to have apparent lapses in memory and repeatedly asked detectives for some sort of information to jog her memory, according to the affidavit.

When detectives provided her with a photo of Hickman and asked her if she knew the 44-year-old, she allegedly began crying and repeatedly saying “get it away from me,” authorities said.

After police removed the photo from the interrogation room, Dix allegedly told detectives “Please make sure he is gone, make sure he is not near me, make sure Terry [is] not near me.”

She also allegedly told detectives, “You don’t do people you love like that, that’s not love, I don’t want that, he can’t do people like that, you don’t do people you love like that, I’m sorry,” the affidavit states.

Hickman’s family told investigators that the couple had dated for about three months before breaking up in May. The family member described the relationship as “casual” but said after they broke up, Dix had allegedly begun stalking Hickman, according to the affidavit.

The person—identified in the affidavit as Hickman’s next of kin—said that although Dix had lived in another state, she had somehow found out where Hickman lived.

A witness who knew Hickman well and lived in the same apartment complex told officers that they had seen Hickman in the parking garage with a woman the witness later identified via photograph as Dix, about 30 to 45 minutes before police received the calls about shots being fired in the area.

Other witnesses reported hearing the gunshots and a woman screaming “Oh my God!” and yelling for help.

One witness in a nearby apartment, reporting hearing a woman’s voice after the gunshots saying something like “Please wake up” and “Someone help me.”

Dix had reportedly been a PhD student at the University of Illinois Chicago at the time of the fatal shooting, Chicago station WMAQ-TV reports.

In a statement to Oxygen.com , Paul J. Browne, vice president for public affairs and communications at Notre Dame confirmed that Dix is an employee of the university.

“The university is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” Browne said.

Dix is the director of the “Talent Search Upward Bound” program known as TRiO, according to a university website .

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University of Notre Dame employee, Ph.D. student accused of stalking, killing ex-boyfriend in D.C.

WASHINGTON — A Ph.D. student and employee of the University of Notre Dame has been charged with stalking her ex-boyfriend of three months and gunning him down inside an apartment in Washington, D.C.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix , 37, of South Bend, Indiana, is charged with first-degree murder while armed in the fatal shooting of Terry Hickman, 44, on Saturday.

Dix serves as the director of Notre Dame’s Talent Search and Upward Bound programs, or TRiO programs. According to the university’s website , the federal outreach programs are designed to “assist young people from low-income families and potential first-generation college students as they progress from middle school, high school, college and beyond.”

That involves tutoring and academic counseling in South Bend’s schools, the South Bend Tribune reported.

“The University is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” University of Notre Dame spokesperson Paul Browne told the newspaper.

>> Read more true crime stories

According to Dix’s university bio , she is also currently studying at the University of Illinois at Chicago for her Ph.D. in gender studies. She is also active in the South Bend chapter of the National Pan-Hellenic Council.

Officials from D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department said officers were called around 5:26 p.m. Saturday to the Eliot on 4th apartment building in the 1000 block of 4th Street SW for the sound of gunshots and reports of a woman with a gun. When they arrived, they found Hickman dead of gunshot wounds inside his fifth-floor apartment.

Dix was taken into custody at the scene. She is being held without bond in the Central Detention Facility.

An affidavit written by Detective Luke French, of the Metropolitan Police Department, describes in painstaking detail the scene investigators came upon. Hickman was found dead in his living room.

According to his autopsy, he was shot five times, at least once from close range. He was shot multiple times in the head, neck and face, and once in the arm, the affidavit states.

Bullet holes, ricochet marks, shell casings and at least one spent bullet were found in the living room and bedroom of the apartment. A black Ruger Security-9 handgun was on the floor near Hickman’s body.

To the right of his body was a single long fingernail, the affidavit states .

When detectives questioned the first officers on the scene, they said they’d arrived to hear the sound of a woman’s screams for help from inside Hickman’s apartment. She refused to open the door, so they obtained a master key fob and used it to enter the apartment.

Hickman was facedown on the living room floor, and the woman, Dix, was kneeling at his feet.

“Officers commanded the defendant to show her hands,” the affidavit states . “The defendant raised her left hand and was observed to be holding a handgun in the left hand.”

The officers demanded she drop the weapon and she complied. At that point, Dix was placed in handcuffs.

According to French , the officers could hear a voice coming from a cellphone in a pink wallet case. When they spoke to the woman on the other end, she identified herself as Dix’s mother.

“The individual stated the defendant called her and stated, ‘He pushed me and I shot him,’” French wrote .

The phone case contained a Florida driver’s license identifying Dix, who is a native of Jacksonville.

It also contained Dix’s Notre Dame employee identification card.

University of Notre Dame The campus of the University of Notre Dame in pictured. (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Dix was taken to an area hospital for treatment of any injuries, and staff there observed an abrasion to the inside of her lower lip, according to the court document . A doctor later told investigators she complained only of pain in her back, but did not explain how she may have injured it.

She had no physical signs of trauma and did not indicate she’d been assaulted.

The doctor said Dix reported a period of blacking out and a loss of memory, so a CT scan was conducted.

When detectives spoke to Dix, she “appeared upset and despondent,” but offered few answers to their questions, the affidavit states .

The detectives also spoke to two witnesses while at the hospital. The witnesses said they’d just parked their car outside the apartment building when they heard three loud pops that they at first thought were fireworks being shot off one of the balconies.

One witness recalled hearing a woman scream, “Oh my God,” French wrote. The woman also screamed out some names that the witness thought were either Derrick or Jared.

“Witness 1 stated that (he) observed a woman pacing back and forth who appeared as if she needed some help,” the affidavit states . “Witness 1 was able to see the woman because the woman’s blinds were halfway lifted.”

As the second witness called 911, the first witness yelled at the woman to see if she needed help. Additional tenants came to their windows, trying to see what was going on.

Washington stalking shooting Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, of South Bend, Ind., is accused of fatally shooting her ex-boyfriend, Terry Hickman, 44, on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020, in his fifth-floor apartment at Washington, D.C.'s Eliot on 4th building, pictured in a 2019 Street View image. (Google)

The witness told detectives as the woman paced, he could see what looked like a gun in one of her hands and a cellphone in the other, according to the document.

“Witness 1 stated that (he) does not know guns well and did not want to fully commit to what the woman was holding,” French wrote . “Witness 1 stated that the woman was in distress and appeared to be trying to figure out to call for help or something.”

The second witness echoed some of what the first told investigators but said he could only see the woman’s silhouette and could not tell if she was holding anything.

Residents in neighboring apartments also told detectives they heard gunshots and a woman screaming. One neighbor said he could hear the woman screaming for someone to “please wake up.”

One of the more vital witnesses was a friend of Hickman’s who had seen him with Dix less than an hour before the fatal shooting. The witness, identified as Witness 3, said he’d just come back from Pentagon City Mall and had parked in the parking garage when he heard Hickman call out to him.

Dix was with Hickman. The witness recognized her because they’d met before and he described her as a “professor at Notre Dame,” the affidavit states .

After learning of the shooting on the fifth floor at the back of the building, the witness tried calling Hickman because he knew Hickman lived there. The calls went unanswered.

Read the affidavit in support of Nijinsky Dix’s arrest below.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix Affid... by National Content Desk

Another resident sent Witness 3 a photo of Dix being wheeled on a gurney out of the building and to a waiting ambulance. The witness showed the photo to detectives and said that was the woman he’d seen with Hickman in the parking garage, the court document states .

Detectives interviewed Hickman’s next of kin, identified in court records as his child. They learned that Hickman had sold a couch to someone around 4 p.m. that day because he was moving to Chicago and “had found someone new.”

Hickman’s family told investigators that Hickman had casually dated Dix for three months, ending in May. Dix, who would fly from Indiana to D.C. to see Hickman, had begun stalking him and, despite living in another state, had managed to find where Hickman lived, the affidavit states .

She had allegedly called Hickman’s child on his birthday, which the child found “weird,” and had called Hickman’s sister, “attempting to be friendly.”

When Dix was taken to the police station for questioning, she complained of trouble with her memory. She also complained again of back pain but could not explain the cause of the pain.

>> Read more trending news

Dix was able to tell detectives her name but said she could not remember her date of birth or where she lived, though she knew she didn’t live in D.C. According to the affidavit , she said she didn’t know how she’d gotten to D.C.

When the interviewers asked if she owned a gun, she said she’d bought a “baby gun” prior to the presidential election.

Dix asked detectives several times for information that might “jog her memory” of what had happened, so they showed her a photo of Hickman and asked if she knew him.

“The defendant began crying and repeating, ‘Get it away from me,’” the affidavit states .

The detectives removed the photo from the room, at which point she asked them to make sure he was gone.

“Please make sure he is gone, make sure he is not near me, make sure Terry not near me,” she said, according to French . “You don’t do people you love like that. That’s not love. I don’t want that.

“He can’t do people like that. You don’t do people you love like that. I’m sorry.”

Cox Media Group

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Chicago PhD student accused of stalking, killing ex-boyfriend

Nijinsky dix, 37, has been charged with second-degree murder in the saturday slaying of 44-year-old terry hickman.

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A Chicago Ph.D. student studying criminology fatally shot her ex-boyfriend at his Washington, DC , home, authorities said.

Nijinsky Dix, 37, a student at the University of Illinois Chicago, has been charged with second-degree murder in the slaying Saturday of 44-year-old Terry Hickman, whom she dated for three months,  the South Bend Tribune reported .

Shortly before 5:30 p.m., police responded to reports of gunfire at the apartment complex in the nation’s capital.

They found Dix kneeling beside the bullet-riddled body of Hickman, who was pronounced dead at the scene, the outlet reported.

Police said Dix was holding in her left hand a gun, which officers ordered her to put down.

She was also on speakerphone with someone, who identified themselves to authorities as her mother, the Tribune reported.

Her mother told officers that Dix called her and said, “He pushed me, and I shot him.”

Dix was taken to the hospital, where she complained of memory loss and back pain but showed no signs of being assaulted,  NBC Chicago reported .

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When questioned about the incident, Dix cited her memory problems and asked them for information that could help jog her recollection, the outlet reported.

They showed her a photo of Hickman, which prompted Dix to cry and repeatedly shout, “Get it away from me,” the report said.

Hickman’s family told authorities that he and Dix had dated for three months before the pair broke up in May, the outlet reported. They claimed that Dix had started “stalking” her former flame after the split.

It’s unclear how or why Dix ended up in Washington, DC.

She has been pursuing a doctorate in criminology, law and justice in Chicago, while also working as an employee at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where she’s the director of a talent search program, according to the colleges.

Notre Dame said they’re “aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” the outlets reported.

Dix also faces charges for possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of an unregistered firearm, police said.

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University of Notre Dame employee, Ph.D. student accused of stalking, killing ex-boyfriend in D.C.

WASHINGTON — A Ph.D. student and employee of the University of Notre Dame has been charged with stalking her ex-boyfriend of three months and gunning him down inside an apartment in Washington, D.C.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix , 37, of South Bend, Indiana, is charged with first-degree murder while armed in the fatal shooting of Terry Hickman, 44, on Saturday.

Dix serves as the director of Notre Dame’s Talent Search and Upward Bound programs, or TRiO programs. According to the university’s website , the federal outreach programs are designed to “assist young people from low-income families and potential first-generation college students as they progress from middle school, high school, college and beyond.”

That involves tutoring and academic counseling in South Bend’s schools, the South Bend Tribune reported.

“The University is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” University of Notre Dame spokesperson Paul Browne told the newspaper.

>> Read more true crime stories

According to Dix’s university bio , she is also currently studying at the University of Illinois at Chicago for her Ph.D. in gender studies. She is also active in the South Bend chapter of the National Pan-Hellenic Council.

Officials from D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department said officers were called around 5:26 p.m. Saturday to the Eliot on 4th apartment building in the 1000 block of 4th Street SW for the sound of gunshots and reports of a woman with a gun. When they arrived, they found Hickman dead of gunshot wounds inside his fifth-floor apartment.

Dix was taken into custody at the scene. She is being held without bond in the Central Detention Facility.

An affidavit written by Detective Luke French, of the Metropolitan Police Department, describes in painstaking detail the scene investigators came upon. Hickman was found dead in his living room.

According to his autopsy, he was shot five times, at least once from close range. He was shot multiple times in the head, neck and face, and once in the arm, the affidavit states.

Bullet holes, ricochet marks, shell casings and at least one spent bullet were found in the living room and bedroom of the apartment. A black Ruger Security-9 handgun was on the floor near Hickman’s body.

To the right of his body was a single long fingernail, the affidavit states .

When detectives questioned the first officers on the scene, they said they’d arrived to hear the sound of a woman’s screams for help from inside Hickman’s apartment. She refused to open the door, so they obtained a master key fob and used it to enter the apartment.

Hickman was facedown on the living room floor, and the woman, Dix, was kneeling at his feet.

“Officers commanded the defendant to show her hands,” the affidavit states . “The defendant raised her left hand and was observed to be holding a handgun in the left hand.”

The officers demanded she drop the weapon and she complied. At that point, Dix was placed in handcuffs.

According to French , the officers could hear a voice coming from a cellphone in a pink wallet case. When they spoke to the woman on the other end, she identified herself as Dix’s mother.

“The individual stated the defendant called her and stated, ‘He pushed me and I shot him,’” French wrote .

The phone case contained a Florida driver’s license identifying Dix, who is a native of Jacksonville.

It also contained Dix’s Notre Dame employee identification card.

University of Notre Dame The campus of the University of Notre Dame in pictured. (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Dix was taken to an area hospital for treatment of any injuries, and staff there observed an abrasion to the inside of her lower lip, according to the court document . A doctor later told investigators she complained only of pain in her back, but did not explain how she may have injured it.

She had no physical signs of trauma and did not indicate she’d been assaulted.

The doctor said Dix reported a period of blacking out and a loss of memory, so a CT scan was conducted.

When detectives spoke to Dix, she “appeared upset and despondent,” but offered few answers to their questions, the affidavit states .

The detectives also spoke to two witnesses while at the hospital. The witnesses said they’d just parked their car outside the apartment building when they heard three loud pops that they at first thought were fireworks being shot off one of the balconies.

One witness recalled hearing a woman scream, “Oh my God,” French wrote. The woman also screamed out some names that the witness thought were either Derrick or Jared.

“Witness 1 stated that (he) observed a woman pacing back and forth who appeared as if she needed some help,” the affidavit states . “Witness 1 was able to see the woman because the woman’s blinds were halfway lifted.”

As the second witness called 911, the first witness yelled at the woman to see if she needed help. Additional tenants came to their windows, trying to see what was going on.

Washington stalking shooting Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, of South Bend, Ind., is accused of fatally shooting her ex-boyfriend, Terry Hickman, 44, on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020, in his fifth-floor apartment at Washington, D.C.'s Eliot on 4th building, pictured in a 2019 Street View image. (Google)

The witness told detectives as the woman paced, he could see what looked like a gun in one of her hands and a cellphone in the other, according to the document.

“Witness 1 stated that (he) does not know guns well and did not want to fully commit to what the woman was holding,” French wrote . “Witness 1 stated that the woman was in distress and appeared to be trying to figure out to call for help or something.”

The second witness echoed some of what the first told investigators but said he could only see the woman’s silhouette and could not tell if she was holding anything.

Residents in neighboring apartments also told detectives they heard gunshots and a woman screaming. One neighbor said he could hear the woman screaming for someone to “please wake up.”

One of the more vital witnesses was a friend of Hickman’s who had seen him with Dix less than an hour before the fatal shooting. The witness, identified as Witness 3, said he’d just come back from Pentagon City Mall and had parked in the parking garage when he heard Hickman call out to him.

Dix was with Hickman. The witness recognized her because they’d met before and he described her as a “professor at Notre Dame,” the affidavit states .

After learning of the shooting on the fifth floor at the back of the building, the witness tried calling Hickman because he knew Hickman lived there. The calls went unanswered.

Read the affidavit in support of Nijinsky Dix’s arrest below.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix Affid... by National Content Desk

Another resident sent Witness 3 a photo of Dix being wheeled on a gurney out of the building and to a waiting ambulance. The witness showed the photo to detectives and said that was the woman he’d seen with Hickman in the parking garage, the court document states .

Detectives interviewed Hickman’s next of kin, identified in court records as his child. They learned that Hickman had sold a couch to someone around 4 p.m. that day because he was moving to Chicago and “had found someone new.”

Hickman’s family told investigators that Hickman had casually dated Dix for three months, ending in May. Dix, who would fly from Indiana to D.C. to see Hickman, had begun stalking him and, despite living in another state, had managed to find where Hickman lived, the affidavit states .

She had allegedly called Hickman’s child on his birthday, which the child found “weird,” and had called Hickman’s sister, “attempting to be friendly.”

When Dix was taken to the police station for questioning, she complained of trouble with her memory. She also complained again of back pain but could not explain the cause of the pain.

>> Read more trending news

Dix was able to tell detectives her name but said she could not remember her date of birth or where she lived, though she knew she didn’t live in D.C. According to the affidavit , she said she didn’t know how she’d gotten to D.C.

When the interviewers asked if she owned a gun, she said she’d bought a “baby gun” prior to the presidential election.

Dix asked detectives several times for information that might “jog her memory” of what had happened, so they showed her a photo of Hickman and asked if she knew him.

“The defendant began crying and repeating, ‘Get it away from me,’” the affidavit states .

The detectives removed the photo from the room, at which point she asked them to make sure he was gone.

“Please make sure he is gone, make sure he is not near me, make sure Terry not near me,” she said, according to French . “You don’t do people you love like that. That’s not love. I don’t want that.

“He can’t do people like that. You don’t do people you love like that. I’m sorry.”

Cox Media Group

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Chicago PHD student, 37, 'shoots dead her ex-boyfriend, 44, after stalking him to his DC home six months after their three-month relationship ended'

• Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, from Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested Saturday 
• Police say they found her kneeling at victim Terry Hickman's feet holding a gun
• Hickman was pronounced dead at the scene; Dix was later charged with murder 
• One person familiar with the former couple is said to have told police they dated for three months, breaking up in May; Dix is said to have then stalked Hickman 
• That person said 'the woman was stalking the decedent and that she was from out of state but somehow found out where he resided', NBC Chicago reports 

By Lauren Fruen For Dailymail.com

Published: 09:29 EDT, 18 November 2020 | Updated: 09:31 EDT, 18 November 2020

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A Chicago PHD student has been charged with murdering her ex-boyfriend of three months after reportedly stalking him to his Washington DC home. 

Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, from Jacksonville, Florida , was arrested Saturday after police say they found her kneeling at victim Terry Hickman's feet holding a gun. 

Hickman, 44, was pronounced dead at the scene. Dix, who works at the University of Notre Dame, was later charged with second degree murder while armed. 

One person familiar with the former couple is said to have told police they dated for just three months, breaking up in May.

That person said 'the woman was stalking the decedent and that she was from out of state but somehow found out where he resided', NBC Chicago reports. 

Nijinsky Latassia Dix, left, was arrested Saturday after police say they found her kneeling at victim Terry Hickman's feet holding a gun. Hickman, right, was pronounced dead at the scene

Police had been called to Hickman's home, pictured, at around 5:30pm on Saturday evening 

Police had been called to Hickman's home at around 5:30pm on Saturday evening to reports of shots fired. 

There they say they found Hickman, who had been shot, and Dix who is said to have been on the phone to her mom, telling her: 'He pushed me, and I shot him.'

Police said in a statement: 'Upon arrival, members located an adult male, inside of an apartment, suffering from gunshot wounds.' 

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Witnesses are also said to have told police they heard a woman screaming 'oh my god' and 'help me' after multiple shots were fired. They then are said to have seen a woman pacing on the balcony. 

The former couple had also been seen together in a parking lot, prior to the shooting, police said. 

Dix told doctors she had 'blacked out'. She allegedly told police: 'Please make sure he is gone'

Dix later told police 'you don't do people you love like that, that's not love, I don't want that, he can't do people like that, you don't do people you love like that. I'm sorry' after being shown a picture of Hickman. 

She added: 'Get it [the photo] away from me. Please make sure he is gone.'  She had again complained of memory loss. 

Police said in their statement: 'The detectives’ investigation revealed that this offense is domestic in nature.' 

A Notre Dame spokesman said the university 'is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate'. 

Share or comment on this article: PHD student 'shot dead her ex after stalking him when their three-month relationship ended'

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A Chicago Ph.D. student studying criminology fatally shot her ex-boyfriend at his Washington, DC, home, authorities said.

Nijinsky Dix, 37, a student at the University of Illinois Chicago, has been charged with second-degree murder in the slaying Saturday of 44-year-old Terry Hickman, whom she dated for three months, the South Bend Tribune reported .

Shortly before 5:30 p.m., police responded to reports of gunfire at the apartment complex in the nation’s capital.

They found Dix kneeling beside the bullet-riddled body of Hickman, who was pronounced dead at the scene, the outlet reported.

Police said Dix was holding in her left hand a gun, which officers ordered her to put down.

She was also on speakerphone with someone, who identified themselves to authorities as her mother, the Tribune reported.

Her mother told officers that Dix called her and said, “He pushed me, and I shot him.”

Dix was taken to the hospital, where she complained of memory loss and back pain but showed no signs of being assaulted, NBC Chicago reported .

When questioned about the incident, Dix cited her memory problems and asked them for information that could help jog her recollection, the outlet reported.

They showed her a photo of Hickman, which prompted Dix to cry and repeatedly shout, “Get it away from me,” the report said.

Hickman’s family told authorities that he and Dix had dated for three months before the pair broke up in May, the outlet reported. They claimed that Dix had started “stalking” her former flame after the split.

It’s unclear how or why Dix ended up in Washington, DC.

She has been pursuing a doctorate in criminology, law and justice in Chicago, while also working as an employee at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where she’s the director of a talent search program, according to the colleges.

Notre Dame said they’re “aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” the outlets reported.

Dix also faces charges for possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of an unregistered firearm, police said.

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Chicago PhD Student Charged With Murder of Ex-Boyfriend in Washington DC

One witness said dix was stalking the victim, who she dated for three months, published november 16, 2020 • updated on november 17, 2020 at 9:35 am.

A PhD student at the University of Illinois Chicago, who works at the University of Notre Dame, was charged with murder Saturday in the death of her ex-boyfriend in Washington, D.C., according to police and court documents.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, of Jacksonville, Fla., was arrested and charged with second degree murder while armed, possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of an unregistered firearm, the Metropolitan Police Department stated in a news release.

At approximately 5:26 p.m. on Saturday evening, police officers responded to a shots fired call in the 1000 block of Fourth Street, Southwest, and entered an apartment where they found a male individual who had been shot.

The victim, Terry Hickman, 44, was pronounced dead.

According to court documents, when officers arrived at the apartment, they saw the defendant, identified as Dix, kneeling at the victim's feet with her right hand raised and her left hand between her legs. Officers noticed that the defendant was holding a handgun, and asked to her drop the weapon, at which point she complied, the documents stated.

While on scene, officers heard a voice and saw that a cell phone was connected to a call on speaker phone. Officers picked up the phone and talked to the person on the other line who identified herself as Dix's mother, the court documents stated.

"The individual stated the defendant called her and stated, 'He pushed me, and I shot him,'" the court filings continued.

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Dix was taken to the hospital where a doctor conducted a health assessment. Emergency medical staff reported she had an abrasion to her inside left lower lip, but the cause was unclear, according to the documents.

Following an exam, a doctor said the defendant reported back pain and that there was a period of time in which she "blacked out" and lost memory. The doctor advised she was unsure what would cause the defendant to lose memory.

The doctor informed detectives Dix didn't present with any physical signs of trauma and didn't indicate she had been assaulted, the court filings stated.

Police talked to multiple witnesses, one of whom who said they heard shots while outside the building, heard a woman scream "oh my God," and then saw a woman walking back and forth on a balcony.

The witness said the woman appeared to be holding a phone and gun, but that they didn't know weapons well and didn't want to "fully commit" to what the woman was holding.

Other witnesses told police they heard a woman say "help me" after multiple shots went off.

Another individual, who was familiar with Hickman, said she observed Dix with the victim in a parking garage prior to the shooting.

While processing the scene, evidence technicians found a gun that had a round in the chamber. The gun's magazine, according to court documents, contained several rounds of ammunition.

After being released from the hospital, Dix was taken to a police station where she again complained of memory loss. During an interview with detectives, Dix asked police for some sort of information that may jog her memory about what happened, the filings stated.

When shown a photograph of Hickman, Dix began crying and repeating "get it away from me."

At one point she then said, "you don't do people you love like that, that's not love, I don't want that, he can't do people like that, you don't do people you love like that. I'm sorry."

Detectives talked to an individual who said "the woman was stalking the decedent and that she was from out of state but somehow found out where he resided," according to the court filings.

That person said Dix and Hickman had a three-month long relationship that ended in May.

According to the University of Notre Dame, Dix is the director of the "Talent Search Upward Bound" program known as "TRIO."

In a statement, a university spokesman confirmed Dix is employed by Notre Dame and said the university "is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate."

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Gorgeous PHD student stalks ex-boyfriend, shoots him dead over breakup Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

A Chicago Ph.D. student is now facing murder charges after she shot and killed her ex-boyfriend. Nijinsky Dix had been dating Terry Hickman for three months. Police, responding to reports of gunfire, find Dix kneeling beside the bullet-riddled body of the 44-year-old. Joining Nancy Grace today:James Shelnutt - 27 years Atlanta Metro Area Major Case Detective, Swat officer Lawyer www.ShelnuttLawFirm.comDr. Jenn Mann - Marriage and Family Therapist, Host 'Couples Therapy' and 'Family Therapy' on VH1, "The Dr. Jenn Show” on Sirius XM, Author: "The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection and Intimacy", doctorjenn.comDr. Priya Banerjee, M.D.  - Board Certified Forensic Pathologist, Anchor Forensic Pathology Consulting, Assistant Medical ExaminerDan Corsentino - Former Police Chief, Former Sheriff, Served on US Homeland Security Senior Advisory Board, Private Investigator www.dancorsentino.com Alexis Tereszcuk - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter, Writer/Fact Checker, Lead Stories dot Com, Twitter: @swimmie2009

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Notre Dame employee charged with murder

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - A University of Notre Dame employee has been charged with murder.

Nijinsky Dix, 37, is also a PhD student at the University of Illinois Chicago. She’s accused of killing her ex-boyfriend in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

Police say she may have been stalking her ex following their three month relationship, which ended in May.

According to the University, Dix is the director of the Talent Search Upward Bound program. They say they are aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate.

Copyright 2020 WNDU. All rights reserved.

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University of Notre Dame employee, Ph.D. student accused of stalking, killing ex-boyfriend in D.C.

WASHINGTON — A Ph.D. student and employee of the University of Notre Dame has been charged with stalking her ex-boyfriend of three months and gunning him down inside an apartment in Washington, D.C.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix , 37, of South Bend, Indiana, is charged with first-degree murder while armed in the fatal shooting of Terry Hickman, 44, on Saturday.

Dix serves as the director of Notre Dame’s Talent Search and Upward Bound programs, or TRiO programs. According to the university’s website , the federal outreach programs are designed to “assist young people from low-income families and potential first-generation college students as they progress from middle school, high school, college and beyond.”

That involves tutoring and academic counseling in South Bend’s schools, the South Bend Tribune reported.

“The University is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” University of Notre Dame spokesperson Paul Browne told the newspaper.

>> Read more true crime stories

According to Dix’s university bio , she is also currently studying at the University of Illinois at Chicago for her Ph.D. in gender studies. She is also active in the South Bend chapter of the National Pan-Hellenic Council.

Officials from D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department said officers were called around 5:26 p.m. Saturday to the Eliot on 4th apartment building in the 1000 block of 4th Street SW for the sound of gunshots and reports of a woman with a gun. When they arrived, they found Hickman dead of gunshot wounds inside his fifth-floor apartment.

Dix was taken into custody at the scene. She is being held without bond in the Central Detention Facility.

An affidavit written by Detective Luke French, of the Metropolitan Police Department, describes in painstaking detail the scene investigators came upon. Hickman was found dead in his living room.

According to his autopsy, he was shot five times, at least once from close range. He was shot multiple times in the head, neck and face, and once in the arm, the affidavit states.

Bullet holes, ricochet marks, shell casings and at least one spent bullet were found in the living room and bedroom of the apartment. A black Ruger Security-9 handgun was on the floor near Hickman’s body.

To the right of his body was a single long fingernail, the affidavit states .

When detectives questioned the first officers on the scene, they said they’d arrived to hear the sound of a woman’s screams for help from inside Hickman’s apartment. She refused to open the door, so they obtained a master key fob and used it to enter the apartment.

Hickman was facedown on the living room floor, and the woman, Dix, was kneeling at his feet.

“Officers commanded the defendant to show her hands,” the affidavit states . “The defendant raised her left hand and was observed to be holding a handgun in the left hand.”

The officers demanded she drop the weapon and she complied. At that point, Dix was placed in handcuffs.

According to French , the officers could hear a voice coming from a cellphone in a pink wallet case. When they spoke to the woman on the other end, she identified herself as Dix’s mother.

“The individual stated the defendant called her and stated, ‘He pushed me and I shot him,’” French wrote .

The phone case contained a Florida driver’s license identifying Dix, who is a native of Jacksonville.

It also contained Dix’s Notre Dame employee identification card.

University of Notre Dame The campus of the University of Notre Dame in pictured. (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Dix was taken to an area hospital for treatment of any injuries, and staff there observed an abrasion to the inside of her lower lip, according to the court document . A doctor later told investigators she complained only of pain in her back, but did not explain how she may have injured it.

She had no physical signs of trauma and did not indicate she’d been assaulted.

The doctor said Dix reported a period of blacking out and a loss of memory, so a CT scan was conducted.

When detectives spoke to Dix, she “appeared upset and despondent,” but offered few answers to their questions, the affidavit states .

The detectives also spoke to two witnesses while at the hospital. The witnesses said they’d just parked their car outside the apartment building when they heard three loud pops that they at first thought were fireworks being shot off one of the balconies.

One witness recalled hearing a woman scream, “Oh my God,” French wrote. The woman also screamed out some names that the witness thought were either Derrick or Jared.

“Witness 1 stated that (he) observed a woman pacing back and forth who appeared as if she needed some help,” the affidavit states . “Witness 1 was able to see the woman because the woman’s blinds were halfway lifted.”

As the second witness called 911, the first witness yelled at the woman to see if she needed help. Additional tenants came to their windows, trying to see what was going on.

Washington stalking shooting Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, of South Bend, Ind., is accused of fatally shooting her ex-boyfriend, Terry Hickman, 44, on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020, in his fifth-floor apartment at Washington, D.C.'s Eliot on 4th building, pictured in a 2019 Street View image. (Google)

The witness told detectives as the woman paced, he could see what looked like a gun in one of her hands and a cellphone in the other, according to the document.

“Witness 1 stated that (he) does not know guns well and did not want to fully commit to what the woman was holding,” French wrote . “Witness 1 stated that the woman was in distress and appeared to be trying to figure out to call for help or something.”

The second witness echoed some of what the first told investigators but said he could only see the woman’s silhouette and could not tell if she was holding anything.

Residents in neighboring apartments also told detectives they heard gunshots and a woman screaming. One neighbor said he could hear the woman screaming for someone to “please wake up.”

One of the more vital witnesses was a friend of Hickman’s who had seen him with Dix less than an hour before the fatal shooting. The witness, identified as Witness 3, said he’d just come back from Pentagon City Mall and had parked in the parking garage when he heard Hickman call out to him.

Dix was with Hickman. The witness recognized her because they’d met before and he described her as a “professor at Notre Dame,” the affidavit states .

After learning of the shooting on the fifth floor at the back of the building, the witness tried calling Hickman because he knew Hickman lived there. The calls went unanswered.

Read the affidavit in support of Nijinsky Dix’s arrest below.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix Affid... by National Content Desk

Another resident sent Witness 3 a photo of Dix being wheeled on a gurney out of the building and to a waiting ambulance. The witness showed the photo to detectives and said that was the woman he’d seen with Hickman in the parking garage, the court document states .

Detectives interviewed Hickman’s next of kin, identified in court records as his child. They learned that Hickman had sold a couch to someone around 4 p.m. that day because he was moving to Chicago and “had found someone new.”

Hickman’s family told investigators that Hickman had casually dated Dix for three months, ending in May. Dix, who would fly from Indiana to D.C. to see Hickman, had begun stalking him and, despite living in another state, had managed to find where Hickman lived, the affidavit states .

She had allegedly called Hickman’s child on his birthday, which the child found “weird,” and had called Hickman’s sister, “attempting to be friendly.”

When Dix was taken to the police station for questioning, she complained of trouble with her memory. She also complained again of back pain but could not explain the cause of the pain.

>> Read more trending news

Dix was able to tell detectives her name but said she could not remember her date of birth or where she lived, though she knew she didn’t live in D.C. According to the affidavit , she said she didn’t know how she’d gotten to D.C.

When the interviewers asked if she owned a gun, she said she’d bought a “baby gun” prior to the presidential election.

Dix asked detectives several times for information that might “jog her memory” of what had happened, so they showed her a photo of Hickman and asked if she knew him.

“The defendant began crying and repeating, ‘Get it away from me,’” the affidavit states .

The detectives removed the photo from the room, at which point she asked them to make sure he was gone.

“Please make sure he is gone, make sure he is not near me, make sure Terry not near me,” she said, according to French . “You don’t do people you love like that. That’s not love. I don’t want that.

“He can’t do people like that. You don’t do people you love like that. I’m sorry.”

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Suspect in University of Utah killing was victim's ex-boyfriend and a registered sex offender

October 24, 2018 / 7:38 AM EDT / CBS News

The actions of campus police at the University of Utah are under scrutiny after the shooting death of a student-athlete . Police say 21-year-old Lauren McCluskey was gunned down Monday night by her former boyfriend, 37-year-old Melvin Rowland, who later killed himself.

Lauren's mother Jill McCluskey says Rowland lied about his criminal past to her daughter and that she told police he was harassing her. He was a parolee, a registered sex offender and apparently had a family, but according to Lauren's mother she didn't know any of that when she recently dated him, CBS News correspondent Carter Evans reports.

In a statement, Jill McCluskey said she was on the phone with her daughter as she walked on campus Monday night. "Suddenly, I heard her yell, 'No, no, no!' That was the last I heard from her." She said Lauren "previously dated her killer for about one month" and ended the relationship in early October after learning "he lied to her about his name, his age, and his criminal history." Rowland had spent nearly a decade behind bars.

"At the time that we arrested him, he was 22 years old, he was a young man, but he had absolutely zero ability to control his impulses….At the time that we picked him up on September 17th of 2003, he was attempting to have sex with a 13-year-old child," said former prosecutor Paul Amann, who helped put Rowland behind bars.

Rowland told officials he was a reformed family man at his last parole hearing in January, where he said, "But the underlying is, I was just ashamed of coming back. And letting my family down. Being a father and a husband."

After their breakup earlier this month, Lauren filed a complaint to campus police saying Rowland was harassing her. Detectives opened an investigation but reportedly did not notify parole officials.

Asked if law enforcement had done enough to protect her, university police chief Dale Brophy said, "I want the answer to that question as well...The detective had been in contact with Ms. McCluskey, and they were working to build a case."

Shannon McNatt, who first met McCluskey as a freshman, is struggling to make sense of the tragedy.

"She did the right thing, she tried to get help, she, you know, did the things that you're supposed to do, and something awful still happens," McNatt said.

Rowland fled after McCluskey was shot and was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had violated his parole and was sent back to prison twice. 

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Chennai PhD student, boyfriend stab ex-lover to death over stalking

The chennai police have arrested a phd student and her boyfriend for killing the woman’s ex-boyfriend, who was allegedly stalking her. the police said the two had broken up but the deceased harassed her..

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Chennai police arrested a PhD student and her boyfriend for killing a man for stalking. The deceased was identified as K Senthil, 43, who was in a relationship with 26-year-old J Desapriya. They broke up but Senthil allegedly pressured Desapriya for marriage.

The police said Desapriya’s boyfriend, identified as 27-year-old S Arun Pandian, was the other accused in the case. The police said Senthil was stabbed to death outside a private college in Kelambakkam on Thursday. Senthil and Desapriya were lovers, but they broke up during the lockdown, the police said.

Senthil allegedly harassed her, putting pressure on her to marry him. He threatened to upload their pictures on the internet, the police said.

The police said Senthil hailed from Perambalur and was a Physics demonstrator at an engineering college in Chennai. Desapriya is from Thiruvannamalai and a Physics research scholar at a private college in Kalavakkam on Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR).

Her boyfriend, Arun Pandian, is from Ulundurpet. He is a research scholar at a university in Kattankulathur, the police said.

Around 1.30 pm on Thursday, Desapriya asked Senthil to meet her at her college. They were talking when Arun Pandian joined them. Police said there was a heated argument among them, after which Desapriya and Arun Pandian slit Senthil’s throat and stabbed him several times.

Desapriya and Pandian tried to flee but a crowd prevented them from escaping. They were caught and handed over to the police.

In their initial probe, the police found that Senthil was stalking and harassing Desapriya in his bid to get her ready to marry him. “Senthil is married and his wife is in his hometown,” a police officer said.

Senthil had told Desapriya that he would marry her by convincing his wife becasue the couple did not have children after seven years of marriage.

Police said that Desapriya and Pandian initially planned to lure Senthil to another place and murder him. However, in a fit of rage, they murdered him on the spot.

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Also Read: College in Telangana’s Ranga Reddy district turns Covid hotspot after 38 students test positive Published By: Gautham Balaji Published On: Dec 31, 2021 --- ENDS ---

Family of slain student Lauren McCluskey gets $13.5M settlement from University of Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — The parents of a University of Utah track athlete who was killed by her ex-boyfriend on campus two years ago reached a $13.5 million settlement Thursday with the university, which acknowledged that it didn't handle the woman's case properly.

University of Utah President Ruth Watkins and the parents of Lauren McCluskey announced the settlement at a joint news conference in Salt Lake City that came on the second anniversary of her death. The case brought new national attention to campus safety and dating-violence issues at universities, spurring several changes at the University of Utah.

McCluskey, 21 of Pullman, Washington, had contacted university police more than 20 times to report harassment by the man she had dated before she was found fatally shot in a car near on-campus student housing in October 2018.

“We failed Lauren and her family,” Watkins said. “If these employees had more complete training and protocols to guide their responses, the university believes they would have been better equipped to protect Lauren.”

That marked a shift from what Watkins said back in December 2018 when she said that she hadn't found anything in an initial review of the case to indicate McCluskey’s death could have been prevented.

Jill and Matt McCluskey bristled at those comments and sued the university in 2019, seeking $56 million while claiming the college was negligent in failing to protect their daughter.

An independent review commissioned by the university found multiple missed warning signs before Lauren McCluskey was killed by 37-year-old Melvin Shawn Rowland after she dumped him because she discovered he had been lying about his name, age and status as a sex offender. Rowland took his own life after the attack as police tracked him down.

The university will pay the McCluskeys $10.5 million and give another $3 million to a foundation founded in their daughter's name that is designed to improve campus safety, as well as help collegiate track athletes and animal shelters. An indoor track facility will also be built and named after Lauren McCluskey as part of the settlement.

The McCluskeys said all the money will go to the Lauren McCluskey foundation.

“This settlement is important for many reasons,” Jill McCluskey said. “It addresses how Lauren died, but it also honors how she lived."

The Associated Press

Jury trial begins for man accused of killing ex's boyfriend, body never found

KENOSHA, Wis. — A jury trial begins Tuesday for Zacahriah Anderson, 41, who is accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend and killing her new boyfriend in 2020. The body of the new boyfriend, however, has never been found.

Anderson is facing numerous charges from 2020, including first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse.

According to TMJ4's previous reporting, the charges are in connection to Rosalio Gutierrez Jr.'s disappearance back in May 2020.

Back then, Kenosha police responded to a welfare check at Gutierrez's residence since he had not been seen and missed two days of work.

When police arrived at his home, officers "observed large amounts of blood in Rosalio’s apartment that appears to be fairly fresh," the criminal complaint said.

Anderson's ex-girlfriend told police she had been dating Gutierrez for a few months but Anderson did not approve of their relationship. Anderson and his ex-girlfriend have three kids together.

Gutierrez is yet to be found, but police had enough evidence against Anderson to charge him with both homicide and stalking.

According to a criminal complaint, Anderson's ex-girlfriend told investigators there were numerous instances of stalking from Anderson.

She said Anderson had given a cellphone to their daughter so she could record her mom any time she was upset. The complaint said the phone was also placed underneath the daughter's car seat so Anderson could track his ex-girlfriend's location.

The first day of the jury trial on Tuesday kicked off at 9 a.m.

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How a university failed a student allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend

Zhifan Dong told the University of Utah two days after her ex-boyfriend’s arrest that he had assaulted her.

The 19-year-old freshman and her ex-boyfriend, fellow student Haoyu Wang, had gotten into an argument while at a hotel on Jan. 12, she said. As she was packing her bags, he allegedly turned off the lights and then held down her neck and arms.

“I began to scratch him to get off. He began to hit me,” Dong said, according to a Jan. 14 report written by an employee of the university’s housing office. “I got scared, I quickly packed my stuff, the hotel front desk helped me call the police. That I know of, he was in jail for an hour.”

University policy mandated that the housing staff immediately notify the school police, student conduct staff and Title IX office of possible intimate partner violence. But in an echo of a previous tragedy involving a University of Utah student, those steps would not be taken until Feb. 8 — nearly four weeks later.

By then, it was too late: On Feb. 11, police found Dong’s body in a hotel room, with Wang beside her. He confessed to giving her a fatal dose of heroin and fentanyl, according to an affidavit, as part of what he described as a suicide pact.

Wang, 27, is now charged with murder in his ex-girlfriend’s death. His attorney said he has entered a not guilty plea.

The Salt Lake Tribune recently won a court fight to force the university to release the police report in Dong’s death. On Tuesday, the university released more than 100 pages of documents related to the case, showing that employees made crucial missteps in the weeks before Dong’s ex-boyfriend allegedly killed her. Her death echoes the case of Lauren McCluskey, another University of Utah student killed by a former romantic partner who was on the school’s radar.

After McCluskey’s killing in 2018, the university pledged to improve domestic violence training and streamline the school’s response to reported abuse. But records tracing Dong’s last days indicate that university staff waited weeks after she was last seen to escalate the issue to campus police, repeatedly called an out-of-service phone number for Dong’s ex-boyfriend and called another student with a similar name — raising questions about how much the school’s processes have truly improved and how well it supports international students.

Slain University of Utah athlete had told school of ex-boyfriend’s harassment

The university acknowledged “shortcomings” this week in its response to Dong’s case, including “insufficient and unprofessional” communications and the housing workers’ delay in notifying campus police and other offices. Two housing employees resigned during an internal investigation, and three others were disciplined, school officials said.

“In this case, key details were overlooked and staff failed to make connections with other parts of campus that could have accelerated the university’s ability to gather additional information and respond more urgently,” Lori McDonald, vice president for student affairs, said in a statement . “This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

Brian Stewart, the Dong family’s attorney, said the university’s police force and housing office failed to prevent Dong’s killing despite knowing that Wang had allegedly assaulted her weeks earlier.

“Especially after professing to have learned from Lauren McCluskey’s death, it is inexcusable that the University continues to make the same mistakes with the same tragic consequences,” Stewart, whose firm also represented McCluskey’s family, said in a statement.

Dong’s parents, Junfang Shen and Mingsheng Dong, said the university had betrayed their trust by failing to keep their daughter safe.

“They knew Zhifan was in serious danger but failed to protect her when she needed it the most,” they said in a statement provided by Stewart.

Among the documents released Tuesday was a timeline of the school’s actions since Dong and Wang, international students from China, were admitted and started dating last fall.

After the Jan. 12 altercation — which left Dong with visible injuries, according to a police report released to the Tribune — city officers brought Wang to jail and released him the same day after he agreed to a temporary restraining order, Salt Lake City police said.

City police did not tell university police about the protective order. No policy or law requires them to do so, Salt Lake City police and the university said. Instead, city police said they list restraining orders in a statewide database that law enforcement officers can search.

The next day, officers who were called to the same hotel hospitalized Wang involuntarily due to a suicide attempt, Salt Lake City police said. Police think Dong made the call for help, but officers found Wang alone and could not determine whether Wang had violated the protective order.

The school first heard about the Jan. 12 altercation two days later, when Dong relayed her concerns about Wang’s suicidal ideation to the university’s housing staff. The pair continued living in the same dormitory building, which the university said is allowed when there is a protective order as long as both people abide by it.

When Dong requested that the housing office conduct a wellness check on Wang, staff responded that they were “unable to do much to help” that night and promised to follow up. They closed the initial report by stating that “no further action was needed.” That action was contrary to their training, which mandated that they report possible intimate partner violence and suicidal ideation to police and other campus officials, the university said in disciplinary letters after Dong’s death.

Over the next few weeks, housing staff repeatedly tried to contact both students by email and phone, though they knew Wang’s number was out of service. On Jan. 31, housing staff called a different Haoyu Wang enrolled in the same international program, who reported that he was fine. Unaware that they had spoken to the wrong student, they did not report Wang missing — even though he had not swiped into his dorm in a week.

In early February, Dong’s suitemate and one of her instructors reported concerns that they had not seen her for a while. On Feb. 8, housing staff filed a missing persons report on Dong, alerting campus police for the first time. Officers quickly discovered the city police force’s report on the Jan. 12 incident and Dong’s protective order, according to the school.

On a video call with university police officers on Feb. 8., Dong appeared to be alone, but refused to tell them where she was, the school says. Officers searched several local hotels and spoke with Dong’s mother, who assured them that her daughter would return to campus that week.

Instead, the search ended in tragedy. On Feb. 11 at 3:51 a.m., Wang emailed a housing administrator that he and Dong were still in love and had made a pact to die by suicide together. The administrator saw the email an hour later and called police, who found Dong dead in a local hotel room and arrested Wang.

Wang is being held in jail and is awaiting a competency hearing in his case. His attorney said in a statement Friday that, “there are mental health issues concerning everyone involved in this case that will need to be addressed prior to trial and I would conclude with the need for adequate and early mental health assessments and care that could prevent additional tragedies in the future.”

Dong’s death comes less than two years after the university settled with McCluskey’s family for $13.5 million, acknowledging that it mishandled her repeated attempts to get help from university officials. McCluskey, a 21-year-old track and field athlete, told campus police in 2018 that she was being harassed and extorted by Melvin Rowland, whom she briefly dated before discovering that he was a registered sex offender, according to a university review .

According to a lawsuit filed by her parents, McCluskey provided a campus officer with explicit photos of herself that Rowland was using to blackmail her; the officer then bragged about the photos downloaded to his personal phone and shared them with a colleague not involved with the case. Days later, Rowland shot and killed McCluskey on campus before killing himself.

An officer allegedly showed explicit photos of a woman later killed by her ex-boyfriend

In addition to Dong and McCluskey, three other women at the University of Utah have been killed in domestic violence cases, according to the Tribune . Staff member Katherine Peralta was killed by her husband in 2016, medical resident Sarah Hawley was killed by her boyfriend in 2019 and undergraduate Mackenzie Lueck was killed in 2019 by a man she had talked with on a dating app.

Jhumka Gupta, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies intimate partner violence, said Dong’s case illustrates the need for universities to consider how their violence prevention programs support international students, who may already feel more isolated on campus.

“It’s important to also note the mix-up of the names by university personnel — a different Haoyu Wang was contacted by university housing staff at one point, which underscores the critical importance of integrating an intersectional perspective into campus dating violence prevention and intervention,” Gupta said in an email.

Kimmi Wolf, a spokesperson for the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, said it takes “strength and courage” to bring abuse allegations to authority figures and institutions need to respond appropriately.

“A domestic violence response, either in the community or on a university campus, needs to be a coordinated effort,” Wolf said in a statement. “When victims request help, there is no room for silos or a lack of open communication, especially when the victim is in mid-crisis.”

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In Days Before Her Murder, Utah Track Star Called Police 6 Times to Report Ex Was Stalking Her

Lauren McCluskey reached out to authorities for help after being harassed by an ex-boyfriend, who ultimately murdered her before shooting himself

University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey called police six times in the 10 days before her ex-boyfriend killed her, according to recently released reports of police investigations into her murder.

Reviews into McCluskey’s Oct. 22, 2018, murder — which were conducted by the University of Utah Department of Public Safety and the Utah Department of Public Safety and obtained by PEOPLE — show that the 21-year-old track star repeatedly reached out for help when Melvin Rowland, 37, a convicted sex offender, harassed and stalked her after she broke up with him.

The university report cites “shortcomings” in the system, such as “gaps in training, awareness, and enforcement of certain policies rather than lapses in individual performance” when describing how campus police handled McCluskey’s case.

Still, university officials said in the report they don’t believe they could have stopped Rowland from murdering McCluskey.

“This report does not offer us a reason to believe this tragedy could have been prevented,” University of Utah President Ruth Watkins said at a December 19 press conference, the Deseret News reports. “But instead, the report tells us how we can improve.”

McCluskey was found dead in the back seat of a parked car on the night of Oct. 22, 2018, after Rowland, whom she’d dated for about a month and who lied to her about his name, age and criminal background, shot her in the head after harassing her for weeks, according to a statement from the university.

After a police chase, Rowland ran into a nearby church where he fatally shot himself, CBS News reports.

McCluskey broke up with Rowland on Oct. 9 after a friend told her about his criminal history. Rowland was convicted of attempted forcible sex abuse and enticing a minor over the internet in 2004, the reports state.

McCluskey contacted campus police when Rowland began harassing and stalking her, saying she had paid Rowland $1,000 to prevent him from posting compromising pictures of her on social media, according to the reports.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

At a press conference after the murder, University police chief Dale Brophy said police reports had been filed on Oct. 12 and Oct. 13 in McCluskey’s case, and that the case had been assigned to a detective.

“The detective had been in contact with Ms. McCluskey, and they were working to build a case against our suspect at that time,” said Brophy.

The report says campus police should have done more to help her. Rowland was on parole when he killed McCluskey, but university police did not check on his parole status, the report says.

Released from prison in April, Rowland was on supervised parole, Utah Department of Corrections Public Information Officer Kaitlin Felsted previously told PEOPLE.

“The UUPS detective involved in the investigation of Lauren’s case should have ascertained his parole status when she had evidence that he was a convicted felon and the victim in her statement identified Rowland as a suspect,” the report says.

On Oct. 19, McCluskey called 911 for help because she said campus police weren’t doing enough to help her.

“I’m worried because I’ve been working with the campus police at the U, and last Saturday I reported and I haven’t gotten an update,” she told Salt Lake City Police in a 911 call obtained by CNN.

Daughter’s Murder Was Preventable, Say Parents

On Dec. 20, McCluskey’s parents, Jill and Matthew McCluskey of Pullman, Washington, released a letter criticizing the report, saying more could have been done to help their daughter.

“We respectfully disagree with the conclusion that Lauren’s murder could not have been prevented,” McCluskey’s parents wrote, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Every time McCluskey reached out to campus police, “it was like the first time,” they wrote. “Lauren was asked to frame her concerns anew, repeatedly respond to the same list of questions, and fill out the same forms.”

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Nijinsky Dix: Female criminology PhD student stalks, shoots ex-boyfriend to death

Nijinsky Dix, 37, who is studying for a Ph.D. in Criminology at the University of Illinois Chicago, has been charged for stalking and shooting her ex-boyfriend to death.

She was charged with the second-degree murder of Terry Hickman, 44, at his Southwest DC home on Saturday.

The duo dated for three months before breaking up in May, Hickman’s family said.

Police in the US capital responded to reports of gunfire at 5:30 p.m local time, Fox5 reported.

On reaching the scene, they found Nijinsky Dix kneeling beside the bullet-ridden body of Hickman with a gun in her hand.

She was then ordered to drop the weapon and the victim was examined and pronounced dead on the spot.

The Tribune reported that the suspect was on speakerphone with someone who later identified herself as her mother.

Read Also: Indonesian Musician Jailed Over Remarks On COVID-19

According to the report, Dix’s mother told officers that her daughter told her on the phone, “He pushed me, and I shot him.”

The suspect was then taken to a hospital where she complained of memory loss and back pain.

The Tribune  reported that she was shown a photo of Hickman and broke down in tears before telling officers to take the photo away.

Hickman’s family told cops Nijinsky Dix had been stalking him since their breakup in May.

Fox5  reported that it was unclear how the suspect, who is pursuing a doctorate in criminology, law and justice in Chicago, while also working as an employee at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where she’s the director of a talent search program, ended up in Washington D.C.

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