Graduate student charged with murder in stabbing death of USC professor
A graduate student has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of beloved USC neuroscience professor, Bosco Tjan on campus Friday.
David Jonathan Brown, 28, of Los Angeles is expected to be arraigned Tuesday in downtown Los Angeles, according to the L.A. County district attorney’s office. If he is convicted, Brown faces up to 26 years to life in prison.
Prosecutors allege that Brown used a knife when he attacked and stabbed Tjan in the chest at 4:30 p.m. Friday in his office in the Seeley G. Mudd Building on campus. Brown was immediately taken into custody.
It was the last day of classes.
Tjan, who joined the faculty in 2001, was a professor of psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and a vision loss expert.
As co-director of the Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center, Tjan ran a laboratory devoted to studying human sight. Brown was a doctoral student in Tjan’s lab, according to a USC website.
The district attorney’s announcement comes a day after hundreds of students, staff and faculty gathered to honor the slain professor.
“Bosco died doing what he loved, doing what he believed in — serving his students and building up a new generation of scholars,” USC President C.L. Max Nikias said. “His achievements are real, his influence enduring.”
Tjan led a number of research projects and conducted a lab course on functional imaging. He was also a member of the Society for Neuroscience and Vision Sciences Society.
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