Boyfriend watches girlfriend get murdered on webcam

For all the gut-wrenching stories floating around out there today connected to the one year anniversary of the BP oil spill, there’s one that actually stands out as more horrible than any of them: This story about a young man in China who, while chatting with his girlfriend halfway across the world in Toronto, witnessed her murder.

Reports ABC:

Toronto Police say Qian Liu, a 23-year-old Chinese national studying English at York University, was killed Friday morning when she let an unidentified man into her room while chatting online with her boyfriend in Beijing.

The boyfriend told police there was a knock at Liu’s door around 1 a.m. ET Friday and a man asked to borrow her cell phone.

The boyfriend witnessed “a struggle between the deceased and the man,” according to police, before the suspect shut off her computer and stole the laptop. Also stolen were the webcam she was using to chat with her boyfriend and her cell phone.

The boyfriend, who police have not publicly identified, immediately took to the internet to raise people he knew in Canada who could alert the police. He contacted Liu’s family in Beijing who called the Chinese consulate in Toronto. But it was almost 10 hours after the intruder knocked on the door that police finally entered Liu’s apartment and found the woman dead.

I don’t mean to make light of an utterly horrific situation, but I feel so sorry for the next girl this kid dates who asks to Skype with him.

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