Why Do 'Random,' Untargeted Murders Occur?

Graduate student Kevin Jiang was driving down a street in New Haven, Conn., in 2021, near his fiancée’s apartment, when a car hit him from behind. Jiang got out of his vehicle, possibly to exchange information according to the police, and the driver shot him eight times. 

At first, the shooting did not seem targeted. Perhaps Jiang had been the victim of a random act of road rage, or maybe it was connected to a recent series of shootings that had started occurring in the area two months earlier.

When they arrived on scene, police found .45 caliber casings; video surveillance showed a dark SUV had hit the victim’s car. Both pieces of evidence connected Jiang’s death to the four previous shootings. A witness described seeing Jiang already collapsed on the ground as the shooter continued to fire, and detectives noted a burn pattern on Jiang’s face, which occurs when a gun is fired at close range. This shooting was not as random as it may have seemed.

Evidence eventually led authorities to Qinxuan Pan, a graduate student from another school, who surrendered. Though his motives were never confirmed, detectives learned that he was Facebook friends with Jiang's fiancée, Zion Perry; Pan had once asked Perry if they could video call so he could congratulate her on graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they had met. She had declined. Her fiancé was killed a week after they got engaged. Detectives believe Pan committed the four preceding shootings to convince police that Jiang's death was random.

“Random,” untargeted murders, or homicides committed by strangers, aren’t common. About 10% of homicides in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in the U.S. were committed by a stranger, according to the FBI. A 2014 Homicide Studies paper shows that, as previously unsolved homicides in Indianapolis were solved, they were more likely to have been committed by friends or acquaintances than strangers. In England and Wales, about 16% of the homicide offenses committed in one year were perpetrated by a stranger, per a March 2024 Office of National Statistics (ONS) report.

“It's so rare, when it does happen, generally speaking, we see it on our national news,” Dr. Carol Dando, professor of psychology at the University of Westminster tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The reason why the general public feel threatened and traumatized by stranger murder is it is the thing of nightmares, isn’t it?”

But experts have begun to demystify parts of the phenomenon. 

To begin with, the designation of a murder as being “random” or involving “strangers” may depend on how the terms are defined and what information is available. For instance, in the seven murders allegedly committed by Long Island, N.Y., architect Rex Heuermann, the victims appeared not to know the alleged offender well or at all. However, later investigative findings, including Huermann’s bail application, suggest that at least one victim briefly encountered Heuermann before the offense, Zena Rossouw, a researcher behind a 2024 stranger sexual homicide study, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. 

“There was certainly planning that appears to have gone on in that case,” Rossouw says. Investigators found a document where Huermann planned out the crimes, and police noted a pattern among the case’s victims: several were online escorts and petite.

There are a number of factors that may make some more likely to be victims than others, including gender. In England and Wales, the March 2024 report shows that more men ages 16 and older were murdered in the last year by strangers than women (around 20% of male victims compared to 5% of female victims); female victims in that age range were most commonly murdered by a male partner or ex-partner.

A 2007 study in the Journal of Family Violence interviewed incarcerated serial sex offenders who attacked strangers and found that 69% of “rapists” reported vulnerability as their strongest reason to attack a female. When it comes to stranger sexual homicides, Rossouw says, offenders also consider their access to the victim. How stranger sexual homicide offenders approach victims can be related to the victim’s characteristics and lifestyle. In Rossouw’s study, male victims were more likely to be lured into the crime, and people involved in partying were more likely to be attacked immediately.

Looking at the psychology of perpetrators, people with psychosis tend to target strangers at a somewhat higher rate than people without psychosis, even across different countries and cultures, research director at the University of Eastern Finland Dr. Markku Lähteenvuo tells A&E Crime + Investigation. These attacks are driven by delusions and are not “random” in the sense that the individual attacks without logic or reason. The delusions themselves follow what is known as “psychotic logic”: the individual may believe that someone is out to get them and attack in self-defense, for example.

“I just want to stress that individuals with psychosis, for the most part, are not dangerous. They have a very detrimental illness that can ‘trick’ them into doing things that they often come to regret,” Lähteenvuo says. With access to proper treatment, people with psychosis have a much reduced risk of committing stranger homicide.

In fact, most stranger homicides are still committed by people without psychosis. Childhood trauma and severe personality disorders increase the risk of committing homicide, according to Dando. If an individual abuses substances, exhibits anti-social attitudes or has committed acts of violence in the past, they are also more at risk of committing a violent crime in the future. But these risk factors can be present in lots of individuals who never go on to commit such crimes.

Still, these patterns can aid investigations.

“For researchers, it's very important that we provide useful insights and identify patterns in the crimes and behaviors, because patterns are helpful when there is little information to go on,” Rossouw says.

For the public, risk management strategies can help. Dando says people are encouraged to let someone know where they are and report any behavior they find threatening; bystanders are encouraged to intervene if they see something and they feel it is safe to do so, otherwise to call emergency services.

“Maybe it’s part of the human condition that we’re always going to have violent offenders in our midst,” Dando says, “but we can all do the best that we can to reduce the risk.”