Case of the murder of UC Berkeley student is solved 24 years later

TWENTY-FOUR years after the death of a Filipina/American student at UC Berkeley, police have finally solved her murder.

UC Berkeley police believe Grace Asuncion, a 20-year-old pre-med student, was stabbed to death in February 1992 by John Iwed, who died from a drug overdose in 1993. 

Grace Asuncion

Iwed was a suspect early in the investigation but police were not able to gather the evidence needed to convict him of the murder. Police did not say why they focused on him initially but did say he had no affiliation with the university and did not know Asuncion.

UC Berkeley police Sgt. Sabrina Reich said in a release last week that the case is considered closed. She said police are "confident we had identified the right person."

The Alameda County district attorney’s office reviewed the case, but prosecutors could not file charges because Iwed succumbed to a drug overdose nearly a year after Asuncion was found dead, according to Reich.

Police informed Asuncion’s family in July of the new evidence, said her older brother John Asuncion in Agoura Hills, California

“It was a surprise, as you can imagine,” John Asuncion, 47, told the Los Angeles Times. “It opened up the old wounds, of course. Speaking for myself, I had accepted — it is what it is. A cold case.”

Before his death, Iwed had confessed to his wife that he attacked and killed Asuncion while high on psychedelic drugs, KTVU-TV reported. His wife later told police, but detectives could not verify the account.

Grace Asuncion, a resident of Agoura Hills, California, who was majoring in molecular and cell biology, was stabbed multiple times Feb. 7, 1992,  in the offices of the student group, Pilipino American Alliance. Reports at the time said she often stayed after hours to do her homework in the fifth floor office. 

Her body was found by a custodian. There were no signs she was sexually assaulted or robbed and no motive was ever released.

A year after her death, Asuncion's parents filed a wrongful death suit against the university which ended with a $750,000 settlement.

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3 U.S. college students killed by terroists in Bangladesh

The students killed in the Dhaka terrorist attack are, from left, Abinta Kabir, Faraaz Hossain and Tarushi Jain.

THE THREE students were from India and Bangladesh studying  at two prestigious American universities, so it was not surprising that during summer break they return to visit family and friends.

Their deaths at the hands of terrorists Friday (July 1) in Dhaka, Bangladesh plunged Emory University in Atlanta and the University of California, Berkeley into mourning.

Emory students Abinta Kabir and Faraaz Hossain were among the dead. Kabir, a U.S. citizen from Miami, Fla., was a sophomore at Emory's Oxford College who was visiting family and friends in Bangladesh. Hossain, a junior at the university's Goizueta Business School, was a Dhaka native.

"The Emory community mourns this tragic and senseless loss of two members of our university family. Our thoughts and prayers go out on behalf of Faraaz and Abinta and their families and friends for strength and peace at this unspeakably sad time," the statement said.

Also killed at the Holey Artisan Bakery was 19-year old Tarushi Jain, a native of India. She was a sophomore at UC-Berkeley. Jain, an Indian national, was working on e-commerce growth at Eastern Bank Limited in Dhaka through an internship with UC Berkeley’s Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies. She began the internship in early June, according to a UC-Berkeley press release.

“We are all very devastated to hear the news about Tarishi Jain. She was a smart and ambitious young woman with a big heart. Our deepest condolences to her family, friends, and the entire Berkeley community,” said Sanchita Saxena, executive director of the Institute for South Asia Studies and director of the Center for Bangladesh Studies.

"She was just ready to take action and make change," Rebecca Dharmapalan, 20, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "What’s hitting me hard is that she wanted to see so much happen there ... she wanted to do everything she could for the people."

Another Berkeley student, 18-year-old Chanakya Varma, told the Chronicle that Jain was "genuinely good person who brought out the best in people." He added that her death would make the university "a less brighter place."

UC-Berkeley plans a one-hour memorial vigil for Jain, to be held at noon Tuesday (July 5) in Sproul Plaza. It will also acknowledge the other hostages killed in the attack.

On Friday, several armed terrorists took control of the popular restaurant frequented by ex-pats and foreigners. By the time the standoff ended, 22 people, including six terror suspects, were dead. 

News reports said that the attackers asked each hostage to quote something from the Koran, the Muslim holy book. If they could not, they were slain.

The seige ended when Bangladeshi commandoes, supported by armored vehicles, stormed the cafe, killing six attackers and capturing a seventh, while freeing 13 hostages. Two police officers were killed in an earlier gun battle with the militants.

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UC system is still a beacon for the world's best and brightest; International students are good for business

CALIFORNIA'S higher educational system led by the UC's continues to attract some of the brightest minds in the world despite funding cutbacks, that may alleviate immediate budget concerns but endangers not only the universities but the entire economy in the long term.

Foreign students, particularly from Asia, are drawn to the system to attain an education from one of the top public-supported universities in the world. 

A shining example of this is Radhika Kannan, who was named Cal's top graduating senior. She is this year's winner of the UC Berkeley University Medalist. There's a great story about the Mumbai-born Kannan written by Yasmin Anwar of Cal's media relations.

As this year’s recipient the University Medal, Kannan will address thousands of her peers on Saturday, May 16, at commencement ceremonies. Her speech, she says, will touch on the unpredictability of life, a topic close to her heart, whose mother died during Kannan's junior year.

“As a Cal grad, you really want to be prepared, but sometimes you just can’t be,” Kannan told the writer. 

Cal's top senior, Radhika Kannan

Cal still is one of the top educational destinations for international students - especially from Asia - despite all the budget cuts the university has had to endure in recent years.

During the dark days of the Great Recession, the U.S. was still the educational mecca for foreign students. According to a survey by the Institute of International Education, of the top five campuses for international students, two are public universities: the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, at No. 3. and Purdue, at No. 5. The No. 1 school is New York University with 11,100 foreign students, followed by the University of Southern California, with 10,900 students, according to the report. Columbia ranks No. 4. UCLA came in 6th and Cal, 18th.

Among the states, California had the most international students followed by New York and Texas.

Contrary to critics' claims of too many international students, they only make up 4 percent of America's undergraduate and graduate population.

Years of shrinking state budgets have forced the UC system to rely less on tax revenue and more on tuition. The system began aggressively increasing the numbers of non-California undergraduates six years ago to offset reductions in state support and a freeze on in-state tuition. Out of necessity, UC began mimicking the economic strategy employed by private schools.

A story by the San Jose Mercury News last year indicated that the UC system enrolled about 700 more California freshmen in 2013 than in 2009, a 2 percent increase; and nearly 5,000 more freshmen from other states and countries — a 273 percent increase.

Despite stories about the purported death of California's vaunted higher education system, the nine-campuses is still proving to be a favorite destination for college students. In 2014, an unprecedented 20 percent of the freshman class across UC in 2014 was from outside California, including states like Washington and Texas and foreign countries such as India and China. 

The additional $23,000 in tuition paid by out-of-state students, provides UC with an estimated $400 million in extra revenue that university officials say helps support higher education in the state.

Although UC officials insist that Californians were not losing slots to higher-paying non-residents, the rising number of foreign students has become a hot-button political issue. Many Californian parents and legislators believe this enrollment policy hurts local residents' chances of getting accepted.

UC Berkeley video by Phil Ebiner

In an apparent concession to these concerns, UC President Janet Napolitano said the level of non-Californians offered admission will be capped next year at UCLA and Berkeley, "where the demand is highest." However, she did not announce ceilings for the other seven campuses.

"I also appreciate the concern about the level of non-resident student enrollment," Napolitano said. "As you know, non-resident enrollment — and the additional tuition those students pay — allow us to enroll more in-state students."

According to a research published by World Education News & Review, "the three US states that attract the highest absolute number of international students – California, New York and Texas – on average netted $31,000 per international student enrolled at an institution of higher education during the 2013-14 academic year. The total net income from international students in the state of California amounted to $4 billion, around $3.3 billion in New York and nearly $1.5 billion in Texas."

Foreign students often find that they prefer to remain in the U.S. after their studies.

The chief beneficiaries of the UC system's stellar international reputation and its ability to attract the best and brightest in the world may be the nearby high tech and biotech industries. As U.S. firms find themselves competing on a global scale, international students provide a pool of workers who can smooth the industries' foray onto foreign shores while the U.S. strengthens its own educational standards and expectations. 


An earlier California Senate report stated that "38 percent of international students stay and work in California after graduation, the importance of these students for innovative California companies cannot be over-emphasized. Even those international graduate students who return to their home countries provide a significant means of outreach and produce a highly desirable global presence for the University of California. Moreover, the presence of international graduate students adds a dimension of diversity to UC’s teaching endeavors that spans the hard sciences to the liberal arts."

Students like Kannan, use their education and exposure to new ideas and perspectives to make the world a better a better place. In that way, she's your typical Cal graduate, combining intelligence and altruism. 

She'll be at Oxford next year for her graduate studies but for now, Kannan's main concern  is the speech she'll be making next week to her fellow graduates about preparing for the unexpected. "We're Golden Bears," she said. "We survive."