12 more jurors needed to qualify for Chinese scholar slaying trial

CHICAGO -- Jury selection continued on Friday at 9 am (1400 GMT) at the federal courthouse in Peoria of US state of Illinois for the trial of Brendt Christensen, the accused kidnapper and killer of visiting Chinese scholar Zhang Yingying in 2017.

Thirteen more potential jurors were pre-approved Thursday to participate bringing the total number of qualified jurors in Zhang Yingying's case to 58. The goal of jury selection is to qualify 70 jurors so the prosecutors and the defense lawyers can pick the seated jury, 12 jurors and 6 substitute jurors for the trial.

U.S. District Judge James Shadid said he hopes a complete jury will be seated by Monday next week, followed by a break on Tuesday and opening statements to begin on Wednesday.

The News-Gazette reported on Friday a prosecutor asked Shadid on Thursday if the court could listen to the recordings with headphones during the trial to avoid the poor acoustics in the courtroom. Shadid said he would consider it.

Zhang, a 26-year-old visiting Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), went missing on June 9, 2017, after getting into a black Saturn Astra about five blocks from where she got off a bus on her way to an apartment complex to sign a lease.

Police arrested Christensen on June 30, 2017, who was a former UIUC doctoral student and charged him with the kidnapping, torturing and killing of Zhang. He pleaded not guilty.