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Accused in York student’s death a student politician at York, worked for NGO
ADRIAN MORROW AND TAMARA BALUJA
Toronto— Globe and Mail Update
Published Thursday, Apr. 21, 2011 11:23AM EDT
A 29-year-old Toronto man accused of killing a York University student also studied at the school, where he co-founded a model NATO club, volunteered with the model United Nations and served in student government.
Brian Dickson was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of international student Liu Qian, 23, who was attacked by a man in her apartment near campus the night before she was found dead, a struggle witnessed by her boyfriend in Beijing via webcam.
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Suspect arrested in death of York student
Mr. Dickson was remanded into custody following a five-minute show-cause hearing at a Finch Avenue West court Thursday. The clean-cut looking man dressed in white open-necked shirt, grey pants, was lead into the courtroom in handcuffs. His face flushed, he appeared agitated to courtroom observers.
He was represented by duty counsel and the hearing was put over until April 26, when he will appear via video-link.
Mr. Dickson enrolled in global politics studies at York in 2000 and was still taking courses this year. He may at one point have also studied psychology.
Outside of class, he was a running instructor and volunteered with Developments in Literacy, an organization that raises funds for school children in rural Pakistan. He spent two years as a delegate on the York Model United Nations, attending conferences in Boston, Chicago, Montreal and Ottawa. He also co-founded the school’s model NATO organization, which won a delegation of the year award at a conference at Carleton University.
From 2008 to 2009, he also interned as an executive assistant to the president of the Atlantic Council of Canada, an NGO think-tank that promotes NATO.
Mr. Dickson was vice-president of the undergraduate political science council and was acclaimed as McLaughlin College’s representative to the York Federation of Students in 2006, but served only the first four months of his term before unexpectedly resigning in September of that year.
During this time, he served as an education commissioner and, according to a biographical sketch in an Atlantic Council newsletter, attended general meetings of the Canadian Federation of Students. Corrie Sakaluk, who served as the YFS president during Mr. Dickson’s time there, said he “seemed quiet and nice” but could not remember why he resigned early.
On Wednesday evening, shortly after Mr. Dickson’s arrest, police were seen at an east end home registered to two people with Mr. Dickson’s family name. The house was closed off with a police seal. A man who answered the phone denied that any Dicksons live at the residence before hanging up.
In Beijing, Ms. Liu’s long-distance boyfriend, Meng Xiaochao, said he didn’t know the man accused of killing her.
“She never mentioned the name of Brian Dickson to me…. I've heard some stories abour Chinese girls hooking up with foreigners, but we've been together since the last year of junior high school, and had a very good relationship. I'm very sure about her personality,” Mr. Meng told The Globe and Mail in a telephone interview.
“I hope the murderer receives the punishment he deserves, and I also would like to ask him what he was thinking in his mind at that moment. Liu Qian was so young.”
Mr. Meng was chatting with her via webcam when Ms. Liu let someone she seemed to know into her room at 1 a.m. Friday night. The man tried to hug her, then the two struggled while Mr. Meng watched helplessly from afar. The assailant eventually shut her laptop.
Her boyfriend alerted her family as well as friends in Canada, who went with her landlord to Ms. Liu’s apartment and discovered her body. Mr. Meng said some of the details released in Canada by police and media were “not quite accurate,” but refused to elaborate.
He and her relatives expressed some relief following the arrest in the murder.
“I was told the news by police. I feel now a bit better. A big rock in my heart finally landed on the ground,” Mr. Meng said.
Ms. Liu’s grandmother, 85-year-old Beijing resident Sun Huamei, said she only found out about the arrest when The Globe and Mail called her on Thursday. She said it “comforted her” knowing that the granddaughter she helped raise “didn’t die for nothing.”
Ms. Sun broke down into tears describing the debate she had with the 23-year-old Ms. Liu about her decision to go to York University and study English rather than attend a school in China.
“I told her Canada was too far away, but she said it would be easier to find a job after studying there. I told her not to worry so much about how much money she would earn, and that Canada was too far.”
Late Wednesday afternoon her parents flew in from China to collect her body around the same time police charged Mr. Dickson with first-degree murder. Ms. Liu’s father, Liu Jianhui, learned of the arrest after landing at Pearson International Airport.
“I sincerely thank the people concerned with my daughter's case,” he told reporters shortly after disembarking. “Our daughter was studying very hard.”
But even as Mr. Liu, research director of Communist Party history at a school that trains party officials, breathed a sigh of relief, many questions remain unanswered in the case. Ms. Liu had been found partly unclothed, but there was no sign of sexual assault or trauma to her body, and police are awaiting toxicology reports – that could reveal such things as poisons – to discover her cause of death.
Investigators gave no indication of why someone would want to kill the young student.
However, they indicated that a man whose photo had circulated on the Internet – whom Ms. Liu's roommates had accused of stalking her – was not Mr. Dickson. A man who had once lived in the same building as Ms. Liu and went on a date with her, was considered a “person of interest” in the case. His lawyer said, however, that his client was cleared.
Ms. Liu, who also went by the name “Necole,” came to Canada in September of last year. Previously, she had studied at Beijing City College, and applied for master's programs at universities in Toronto and Windsor, Mr. Liu said. She lived first on Haynes Avenue, in an area called The Village south of campus, where numerous students settle in suited-out houses. In January, she moved into a basement apartment in one such home on nearby Aldwinckle Heights, suggesting in a Facebook posting that her previous place had an insect problem.
In addition to her studies, she kept busy sketching friends and painting, posting some of her work online. One watercolour shows a twisting seaside highway; an oil painting depicts a river running through a green grove of trees.
On Aldwick, a street of cookie-cutter, three-storey red-brick houses, neighbours welcomed news of the arrest Wednesday.
“Students come, students go, but we don't really know faces,” said Shasti Bhoj, who lives a few doors down. “I was trying to look at her picture and think, ‘is this face known to me?' “
Mr. Bhoj said the news of an arrest was reassuring, but he still feels shaken enough to make a better effort to get to know his neighbours. “Now I've got to absorb – ‘does this person live here? Is this person a stranger?' “
Richard Kim, a York student who lives on the street, said it was typical for a house to be rented out to as many as eight or nine students.
“It used to be nice here,” he said. “Now that all the students moved in, you hear about stuff happening.” He said he's thinking of persuading his girlfriend, who was considering a move to the area, to change her plans.
The case hit particularly hard among students at York, which has seen a number of assaults on campus and in the immediate area over the past few months. The night after Ms. Liu's death, a woman was sexually assaulted in a nearby field in what is believed to be an unrelated case; earlier this month a student was beaten in what is believed to be a homophobic attack.
In response, the students union is holding a meeting Thursday to call on the school to improve safety in the area.
York, meanwhile, says it has stepped up security patrols in recent days and offered counselling to students and staff dealing with the loss.
With reports from Mark MacKinnon, Timothy Appleby, Ann Hui and Associated Press
ADRIAN MORROW AND TAMARA BALUJA
Toronto— Globe and Mail Update
Published Thursday, Apr. 21, 2011 11:23AM EDT
A 29-year-old Toronto man accused of killing a York University student also studied at the school, where he co-founded a model NATO club, volunteered with the model United Nations and served in student government.
Brian Dickson was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of international student Liu Qian, 23, who was attacked by a man in her apartment near campus the night before she was found dead, a struggle witnessed by her boyfriend in Beijing via webcam.
MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY
Man, 29, charged with first-degree murder in death of York University student
Loved ones in China glad to hear of arrest in York student’s murder
Police treat death of York student as a homicide
VIDEO
Suspect arrested in death of York student
Mr. Dickson was remanded into custody following a five-minute show-cause hearing at a Finch Avenue West court Thursday. The clean-cut looking man dressed in white open-necked shirt, grey pants, was lead into the courtroom in handcuffs. His face flushed, he appeared agitated to courtroom observers.
He was represented by duty counsel and the hearing was put over until April 26, when he will appear via video-link.
Mr. Dickson enrolled in global politics studies at York in 2000 and was still taking courses this year. He may at one point have also studied psychology.
Outside of class, he was a running instructor and volunteered with Developments in Literacy, an organization that raises funds for school children in rural Pakistan. He spent two years as a delegate on the York Model United Nations, attending conferences in Boston, Chicago, Montreal and Ottawa. He also co-founded the school’s model NATO organization, which won a delegation of the year award at a conference at Carleton University.
From 2008 to 2009, he also interned as an executive assistant to the president of the Atlantic Council of Canada, an NGO think-tank that promotes NATO.
Mr. Dickson was vice-president of the undergraduate political science council and was acclaimed as McLaughlin College’s representative to the York Federation of Students in 2006, but served only the first four months of his term before unexpectedly resigning in September of that year.
During this time, he served as an education commissioner and, according to a biographical sketch in an Atlantic Council newsletter, attended general meetings of the Canadian Federation of Students. Corrie Sakaluk, who served as the YFS president during Mr. Dickson’s time there, said he “seemed quiet and nice” but could not remember why he resigned early.
On Wednesday evening, shortly after Mr. Dickson’s arrest, police were seen at an east end home registered to two people with Mr. Dickson’s family name. The house was closed off with a police seal. A man who answered the phone denied that any Dicksons live at the residence before hanging up.
In Beijing, Ms. Liu’s long-distance boyfriend, Meng Xiaochao, said he didn’t know the man accused of killing her.
“She never mentioned the name of Brian Dickson to me…. I've heard some stories abour Chinese girls hooking up with foreigners, but we've been together since the last year of junior high school, and had a very good relationship. I'm very sure about her personality,” Mr. Meng told The Globe and Mail in a telephone interview.
“I hope the murderer receives the punishment he deserves, and I also would like to ask him what he was thinking in his mind at that moment. Liu Qian was so young.”
Mr. Meng was chatting with her via webcam when Ms. Liu let someone she seemed to know into her room at 1 a.m. Friday night. The man tried to hug her, then the two struggled while Mr. Meng watched helplessly from afar. The assailant eventually shut her laptop.
Her boyfriend alerted her family as well as friends in Canada, who went with her landlord to Ms. Liu’s apartment and discovered her body. Mr. Meng said some of the details released in Canada by police and media were “not quite accurate,” but refused to elaborate.
He and her relatives expressed some relief following the arrest in the murder.
“I was told the news by police. I feel now a bit better. A big rock in my heart finally landed on the ground,” Mr. Meng said.
Ms. Liu’s grandmother, 85-year-old Beijing resident Sun Huamei, said she only found out about the arrest when The Globe and Mail called her on Thursday. She said it “comforted her” knowing that the granddaughter she helped raise “didn’t die for nothing.”
Ms. Sun broke down into tears describing the debate she had with the 23-year-old Ms. Liu about her decision to go to York University and study English rather than attend a school in China.
“I told her Canada was too far away, but she said it would be easier to find a job after studying there. I told her not to worry so much about how much money she would earn, and that Canada was too far.”
Late Wednesday afternoon her parents flew in from China to collect her body around the same time police charged Mr. Dickson with first-degree murder. Ms. Liu’s father, Liu Jianhui, learned of the arrest after landing at Pearson International Airport.
“I sincerely thank the people concerned with my daughter's case,” he told reporters shortly after disembarking. “Our daughter was studying very hard.”
But even as Mr. Liu, research director of Communist Party history at a school that trains party officials, breathed a sigh of relief, many questions remain unanswered in the case. Ms. Liu had been found partly unclothed, but there was no sign of sexual assault or trauma to her body, and police are awaiting toxicology reports – that could reveal such things as poisons – to discover her cause of death.
Investigators gave no indication of why someone would want to kill the young student.
However, they indicated that a man whose photo had circulated on the Internet – whom Ms. Liu's roommates had accused of stalking her – was not Mr. Dickson. A man who had once lived in the same building as Ms. Liu and went on a date with her, was considered a “person of interest” in the case. His lawyer said, however, that his client was cleared.
Ms. Liu, who also went by the name “Necole,” came to Canada in September of last year. Previously, she had studied at Beijing City College, and applied for master's programs at universities in Toronto and Windsor, Mr. Liu said. She lived first on Haynes Avenue, in an area called The Village south of campus, where numerous students settle in suited-out houses. In January, she moved into a basement apartment in one such home on nearby Aldwinckle Heights, suggesting in a Facebook posting that her previous place had an insect problem.
In addition to her studies, she kept busy sketching friends and painting, posting some of her work online. One watercolour shows a twisting seaside highway; an oil painting depicts a river running through a green grove of trees.
On Aldwick, a street of cookie-cutter, three-storey red-brick houses, neighbours welcomed news of the arrest Wednesday.
“Students come, students go, but we don't really know faces,” said Shasti Bhoj, who lives a few doors down. “I was trying to look at her picture and think, ‘is this face known to me?' “
Mr. Bhoj said the news of an arrest was reassuring, but he still feels shaken enough to make a better effort to get to know his neighbours. “Now I've got to absorb – ‘does this person live here? Is this person a stranger?' “
Richard Kim, a York student who lives on the street, said it was typical for a house to be rented out to as many as eight or nine students.
“It used to be nice here,” he said. “Now that all the students moved in, you hear about stuff happening.” He said he's thinking of persuading his girlfriend, who was considering a move to the area, to change her plans.
The case hit particularly hard among students at York, which has seen a number of assaults on campus and in the immediate area over the past few months. The night after Ms. Liu's death, a woman was sexually assaulted in a nearby field in what is believed to be an unrelated case; earlier this month a student was beaten in what is believed to be a homophobic attack.
In response, the students union is holding a meeting Thursday to call on the school to improve safety in the area.
York, meanwhile, says it has stepped up security patrols in recent days and offered counselling to students and staff dealing with the loss.
With reports from Mark MacKinnon, Timothy Appleby, Ann Hui and Associated Press
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