A 21-year-old Johns Hopkins University senior from Silver Spring was found slain in her apartment near the campus in Baltimore, police there said last night. They said she had been asphyxiated.
Linda Trinh, a graduate of Springbrook High School in Montgomery County, who was studying biomedical engineering, was found Sunday in her apartment in a building across the street from the main Hopkins campus.
Johns Hopkins senior Linda Trinh was found killed in her apartment.
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Police said a medical examiner ruled the death a homicide yesterday, but they gave no details on how Trinh was asphyxiated. Detective Donny Moses, a spokesman for the Baltimore police, said a motive in the slaying was not clear.
An e-mail message circulated last night to the campus community by Hopkins officials depicted Trinh as woman who played an important role there.
"She was well-known, widely admired, liked and respected," said university President William R. Brody.
He added that "her contributions as student, leader, colleague, and, most important, friend, have helped to build the Johns Hopkins we love so much."
The e-mail described Trinh as a former president of her sorority and a former member of the varsity volleyball team. A campus spokesman said she played on the team her freshman and sophomore years.
A Hopkins Web site listed the title of her thesis as "The Effects of Functionalized Nanofiber Scaffolds on Adult Neural Stem Cell Proliferation and Differentiation."
In his statement, Brody said, "Words cannot begin to convey the grief and outrage we all are feeling.
"How, we ask, could anyone ever conceive of taking this wonderful young life?" He wondered how she could be taken from friends, family and a world "to which she had so much to contribute."
Trinh's roommate found her in their apartment shortly after noon Sunday, police said, and after making the discovery, she telephoned 911.
The apartment house in which Trinh lived was described by a resident as a privately owned nine-story brick building, in which a one-bedroom apartment rents for about $800 a month.
Moses, the police spokesman, said Trinh's slaying was the 27th in Baltimore this year. There have been more than 270 homicides in Baltimore in each of the past two years.
Brody said the slaying marked the second time in less than a year that an undergraduate was killed. A campus spokesman said that the earlier death occurred in an off-campus house used by a fraternity.
The university enrolls about 4,000 undergraduates.
In his statement, the Hopkins president said steps were immediately being taken to add security in the area around Trinh's apartment house. He said city police and the university's own patrols would step up protective efforts there.
