The University of Utah has agreed to pay $5 million to the parents of slain international student Zhifan Dong in a settlement for the school’s failure to recognize the young woman was in danger in the days before she was killed by her boyfriend.
Employees in the dorms and elsewhere repeatedly mixed up the name of 19-year-old Dong and her former boyfriend, also an international student from China, in their reports. They also repeatedly called the phone number of another student with the same name as the man she was reporting.
The school has since taken disciplinary action against three housing employees and two have resigned. In the settlement, Dong’s parents agree to drop any claims from the case. They had retained the law firm of Parker & McConkie to represent them, the same firm that represented McCluskey’s family against the U.
“We trusted the University of Utah with our daughter’s safety, and they betrayed that trust,” Dong’s parents said in an earlier statement translated from Chinese. “They knew Zhifan was in serious danger but failed to protect her when she needed it the most. We do not want her death to be in vain.”
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