Death of Hopkins Student Was Crime of 'Opportunity'

BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore's homicide chief said Tuesday that the murder of a Johns Hopkins University senior found asphyxiated in her off-campus apartment appeared to be a crime of "opportunity ... a wrong place, wrong-time type thing."

Linda Trinh, a 21-year-old biomedical engineering major from Silver Spring, was found dead in her apartment, across the street from the university, at about 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, police said.

Police have been cautious about releasing information, but Maj. Richard Fahlteich sought to ease the fears of a campus dealing with the second murder of a Hopkins student in nine months. "This does not appear to be an absolutely random act of violence," Fahlteich said.

While he said police had "some evidence," he wouldn't discuss specifics: "There are some leads that detectives are doggedly pursuing."

Fahlteich wouldn't say whether Trinh knew the killer or if there was a forced entry. There was "some security" at the apartment complex, which housed a restaurant in its basement, but Fahlteich also said it was "relatively easy to get in and out of that building and ... a lot of the students are familiar with folks who come in and out of the building who are not students."

The state medical examiner ruled that Trinh had been asphyxiated, but police have refused to discuss other physical details of the death.

Officials haven't identified any suspects. Trinh's death is the 27th homicide in Baltimore this month - compared with 16 at the same time last year.

Fahlteich said Trinh's family is "profoundly distraught" and as "mystified as we are by the tragedy of this case."

Trinh, a former president of her sorority and a former member of the volleyball team, is listed on the university's Web site as having researched a thesis titled: "The Effects of Functionalized Nanofiber Scaffolds on Adult Neural Stem Cell Proliferation and Differentiation."

"Her loss diminishes all of us, even those who did not know her, because her contributions as student, leader, colleague, and, most important, friend, have helped to build the Johns Hopkins we love so much," university president William R. Brody said in an e-mail to students that was posted on the Hopkins' Web site.

Nine months ago, another Hopkins student was killed six blocks from Trinh's apartment. Christopher Elser, 20, of Camden, S.C., died in April after being stabbed by an intruder in an apartment house that had been rented to members of his fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

Despite police arresting someone they called a "person of interest" and offering a reward of $50,000, no one has been charged with Elser's murder.

"We have exhausted all the leads that we know in the Elser case," Fahlteich said, adding that there was no connection between the murders of Elser and Trinh.

Dennis O'Shea, a Hopkins spokesman, said both city police and university security officers would provide extra patrols in the Charles Village area near Trinh's apartment, and that a guard had been stationed around the clock at the building. He said security had been stepped up since Elser's death, with officials adding more emergency telephones, giving more detailed security briefings to incoming freshmen, and offering students living off campus help in assessing the security of their buildings.

Ronald Mullen, director of Hopkins security, said officials needed more information on Trinh's death before determining how security would be changed in the future.

A memorial service would probably be held when the majority of students returned from winter break next week, O'Shea said. Trinh had come back to campus early to work on her research, he said.

O'Shea said staff and students were feeling "a sense of shock, a sense of grief. This is the second time that this has happened in less than a year to our undergraduate body - there's this sense of how can this happen again?"

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)