NEW HAVEN, Conn. — In a series of photos shown in a New Haven courtroom on Tuesday afternoon, graduate student Kevin Jiang posed proudly outside Yale University, beaming toward the camera against the backdrop of the historic buildings on campus not far from where he would be gunned down in 2021 by Qinxuan Pan.

Pan, an MIT researcher, was sentenced Tuesday to 35 years in prison for Jiang’s slaying after pleading guilty in February as part of a plea agreement.

On Feb. 6, 2021, Jiang had just dropped his fiancé Zion Perry off at her home in New Haven when gunshots rang out. Jiang was found lying on Lawrence Street with multiple close-range gunshot wounds to his face, a prosecutor said in court Tuesday.

He died from his wounds and his death was ruled a homicide.

After a three-month nationwide manhunt that involved the FBI, U.S. Marshals and police officers from several states from New York to North Carolina, Pan was arrested in an Alabama apartment on May 14, 2021, and charged with Jiang’s murder.

Investigators learned that he had known Perry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, though the two had not remained in contact other than on social media. Prosecutors said Tuesday that forensic evidence linked Pan to the murder, including Jiang’s DNA on his winter hat.

The killing, loved ones said at the sentencing, was a hateful plot motivated by jealousy.

Not far from the grounds of the university where Jiang was a graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment, his loved ones filled the courtroom at Pan’s sentencing, watching a montage of photos play out, showing Jiang’s bright, wide smile.

Nearly 50 people packed into the courtroom, including Perry, her parents, and Jiang’s parents, as many quietly wiped tears from their eyes. Pan looked at the screen or his feet showing no emotion.

One after the other, nearly a dozen people stepped forward to express their devastation, grief, sorrow and fear in the wake of Jiang’s murder. They shared memories of Jiang, some speaking through sobs as they begged the judge for a harsher sentence, others addressing Pan directly and offering forgiveness.

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