A 25-year-old Queens woman has been charged with murder and weapons possession in the death of a well-known Queens immigration lawyer stabbed to death at his office earlier this week, prosecutors said Wednesday.
XiaoNing Zhang allegedly repeatedly stabbed the 66-year-old attorney, who was identified by police as Li Jinjin but who is said to also go by the name Jim Li, in his 39th Avenue office in Flushing late Monday morning. She was arraigned late Tuesday, though details on a possible attorney for Zhang in this case weren't immediately available.
According to the charges, police responded to a 911 call of an assault in progress at Li's office. They found him in an office on the fourth floor, bleeding from multiple puncture wounds to his neck, shoulders and torso. He later died as a result of his injuries.
Prosecutors say Zhang was still in the victim’s office when police arrived. Her clothes allegedly were stained with blood and two knives were recovered, including one found in the woman’s jacket pocket, officials said.
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"As alleged, the defendant showed up in her lawyer’s office armed with two
knives and, in an outburst of rage, stabbed the victim repeatedly throughout his body," Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement announcing the charges. "Violence is never the solution to any dispute. Now a man is dead and a community grieving this tragic loss."
Li settled in New York after seeking asylum in the U.S. He was a dissident legal scholar who was jailed for two years in China after participating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement and continued to advocate publicly for the many people jailed or killed by Chinese authorities during the nation’s democracy movement.
Chuang Chuang Chen, the CEO of the China Democracy Party, and lawyer Wei Zhu, a friend of Li’s, both told The New York Daily News that the killing might have stemmed from Li’s refusal to take Zhang on as a client.
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Zhang came to the U.S. in August on an F-1 student visa to go to school in Los Angeles, Chen told the Daily News.
