A former University of California Irvine student is believed to have thrown his mother from a building on campus before jumping to his death on Tuesday. Authorities are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the bodies of Andrew Nguyen Doan, 36, and Thao Thi Nguyen, 77, both of Irvine, were found in a plaza in the School of Social Sciences.
“The investigation has determined Doan picked up Nguyen and threw her off the landing of a multistory building,” police said. “Doan then jumped from the same landing to his death.”
Doan was a biological sciences major at UC Irvine from September 2017 to June 2019; he did not graduate, according to a university spokesman.
Campus police received several 911 calls reporting two people on the ground in front of a building just before 4 p.m. Tuesday, Irvine police said.
A motive has not been determined for the incident, but police said they had contacted Doan “multiple times in the past,” most recently in 2019 for “mental health concerns.”
