Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an accused suspect of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, was convicted and sentenced to death by a federal jury on May 15. Lu Lingzi, a former UCR Extension student, was one of the three people killed in the bombings.
Lingzi joined the UCR Extension Center for a few months in 2010 and took part in the University Credit Program. She came from the Beijing Institute of Technology in China and furthered her studies here at UCR, taking math and business courses.
As stated on Lingzi’s Facebook Memorial page, “It was her dream to study in the United States and she had fallen in love with … its people.”
A graduate student at Boston University, Lingzi was near the finish line with some friends watching the runners when the bombing happened. Since then, Lingzi’s family has formed a foundation in Boston to establish educational opportunities for students in her honor.
One of UCR’s political science professors, Loren Collingwood, was also a participant of the 2013 Boston marathon, but finished the race a little less than two hours before the first bombing occurred.
