Linhua Shan, a 26-year-old Asian male, was a promising research investigator in physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa. Originally from China, he had earned his doctoral degree from the university in May 1991. His dissertation on the structure of Saturn's ring system had been recognized with the prestigious D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Award, a high honor for doctoral students at the university.
He was married and his wife also lived in Iowa City.
On the afternoon of Friday, November 1, 1991, Shan was attending a weekly meeting of the theoretical space plasma physics research group in a seminar room on the third floor of Van Allen Hall on the university campus. A few minutes after the meeting began, a former graduate student named Gang Lu, also from China, stood up and, without a word, began shooting with a. 38-caliber revolver. Linhua Shan was one of the first individuals shot and killed in the room.
The gunman, Gang Lu, was a 28-year-old who had received his Ph.D. alongside Shan. Lu was reportedly angered and jealous because his own dissertation had not been selected for the academic award that Shan had won, which also came with a $1,000 prize. Lu, who had once been Shan's roommate, felt he had been wronged by the university and had filed grievances that were handled by an associate vice president for academic affairs. His anger culminated in the meticulously planned attack. After shooting Shan and others in Van Allen Hall, Lu walked to another building on campus where he killed an administrator and wounded a student employee before taking his own life.
The suspect in Linhua Shan's death was the gunman, Gang Lu. Investigators found five letters written by Lu prior to the shootings which detailed his plans and his motives, confirming the premeditated nature of the attack. As Lu committed suicide shortly after the killings, there were no arrests made in connection with the death of Linhua Shan and the other victims of the rampage. The incident left the University of Iowa community in shock and mourning for the lives that were tragically cut short that day.
