Webcam murder in Toronto

A 23 year-old post-grad student, was murdered in Toronto, Canada while chatting  on a webcam with her boy friend in China.

The only child of a Chinese Communist Party history researcher, Qian Liu was a hard-working student with a knack for drawing, who arrived in Canada  last fall to take a master's degree in media at one of Toronto’s three prestigious universities.

One night last week, toward the end of her second semester in a York University English program, she was chatting via webcam with her boyfriend in Beijing when she opened her apartment door to a man who attacked her, before her computer was shut off. The 23-year-old was found dead the next morning.

Police have charged Brian Dickson, a 29-year-old Toronto man, with first-degree murder. Her father, Jianhui Liu, learned of the arrest shortly after landing at Pearson International Airport.

In addition to her studies, she kept busy sketching friends and experimenting with oil painting, posting some of her work online. One watercolour shows a twisting seaside highway; an oil painting depicts a river running through a green grove of trees.

Ms. Liu was chatting with her boyfriend, Meng Xianchao, around 1 a.m. last Friday when a man knocked at the door. After he asked to use her cellphone, a struggle broke out, lasting for a few minutes before the assailant turned off the woman's computer.

The only other webcam witnessed murder was in the Unites States, when a husband shot his wife while she was chatting on line. He later shot himself.