Harvard University was struck by severe tragedy last Sunday when a student viciously stabbed her roommate to death and then hung herself in the bathroom. Another student was also stabbed in the incident. Harvard junior Sinedu Tadesse stabbed her roommate, junior Trang Ho 45 times. Tadesse also stabbed Thao Nguyen, a 26 year old resident of Lowell, Massachusetts who was visiting Ho at the time of the stabbing. According to Martin Murphy, the first assistant district attorney of Middlesex Count, Ho woke up during the ordeal and tried to block the knife, as evidenced by wounds to her hands. Police have been trying to piece together this extremely violent crime, deemed the worst in "at least two decades" by the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. Some officials and Nguyen believe the attack may have been planned as evidenced by a cryptic note that was sent to the Crimson last Tuesday. Along with the note there was a photograph of Tadesse. "Keep this picture," the note said. "There will soon be a very juicy story involving the person in the picture." The Crimson received the note, which had no stamp or postmark. After the events of Sunday morning, the Crimson contacted the Harvard University Police Department, which dispatched investigators to search through a garbage dumpster outside the school newspaper's building. The police recovered the envelope and photo. One possible motive that family and friends have been speculating about is the recently soured relationship between the two roommates, who had lived together for the past two years in the Dunster House dormitory. The relationship tensed up when Ho decided that she wanted to room with someone other than Tadesse next year. A letter sent by Tadesse to Ho last month echoes backs this theory up. "I thought we were going to do stuff together, you'll always have a family to go to and I am going to have no one," Tadesse wrote, the Boston Globe reported. Both Ho and Tadesse went through intense struggles to finally get to Harvard as pre-med majors. Ho, a native of Vietnam, had fled Vietnam on a boat along with her father and older sister about ten years ago. And Tadesse, the daughter of provincial school administrator in the poverty-stricken Ethiopia, won a scholarship to attend Harvard. A 1993 Boston magazine article listed Ho as one of the "25 Who Can Save Boston."
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.
