BRUNSWICK, Maine — A Bowdoin College student found dead in a Topsham parking lot Sunday appeared to have died by suicide, police announced Tuesday.
Twenty-year-old Qingyang Zhan, known as K, was found dead off Main Street near the Frank J. Wood Bridge, about a mile from Bowdoin's campus.
"All investigative facts and circumstances have led this agency to conclude that Qingyang took her own life," Topsham police Chief Marc Hagan said in a statement Tuesday. "No further details regarding Qingyang's death will be released by this agency out of respect for the privacy of her family."
He added, "Barring any non-corroborating information from the Medical Examiner's Office toxicology report, whose findings can take up to 6-8 weeks, this investigation is considered closed."
Zhan was born in Shanghai, China, and had been living in the U.S. since 2019. She helped found Bowdoin’s Chinese Students Association and was also active in the Asian Student Association, Bowdoin President Safa Zaki said in a statement to the college community. Zhan was a government and legal studies and Asian studies double major, a learning assistant for Asian Studies in the Baldwin Center for Teaching and Learning, and a musician who played the piano and guitar as part of the Bowdoin Concert Band.
"There really are no adequate words to convey how devastating this loss is for our community," Zaki wrote.
