Piano prodigy’s arrest
in killing brings shock
at UH
Friends and former teachers of a piano prodigy from Hawaii expressed shock and sadness at his arrest this week in the killing of a University of Texas professor in Austin, Texas.
Jackson Fan Chun Ngai, a 22-year-old graduate student at the University of Texas, is being held on $1 million bail after he was charged yesterday with the murder of Texas professor Danielle J. Martin.
Police said Martin, 56, was hacked to death with a meat cleaver.
Ngai was standing near her body with the cleaver when emergency crews arrived Thursday night in response to a 911 call, police said.
Austin Assistant Police Chief Robert Dahlstrom said when Ngai refused to put the weapon down, an officer fired a Taser gun at him.
University of Hawaii music lecturer Bichuan Li said yesterday that Ngai had recently been hospitalized in Texas because he was hallucinating and having bad dreams.
Li, who taught Ngai privately for four years, also said that when she talked to the student about a month ago, he said he was having "some trouble" at school.
Ngai, originally from Hong Kong, immigrated to the islands with his family while still in grade school.
Li said Ngai attended McKinley High School before enrolling at UH-Manoa, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree.
His father and three brothers live in Honolulu. Li said Ngai's mother died in 2002, during his final semester at UH.
"He was a normal kid," said Li, who was talking through tears. "He was humorous and he was nice."
While at UH he earned a Friends of Music at Manoa scholarship and put on a number of piano recitals. In 2001 he was awarded a scholarship from the Hawaii chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
"The guy was soft-spoken and very determined," said former UH music professor Peter Coraggio. "You would never even think he had a temper. I'm just super-surprised. He never even appeared to have any type of imbalance."
University of Texas spokesman Don Hale said Martin had multiple sclerosis and used a scooter to get around. Ngai, an applied music graduate student, had assisted Martin in getting to and from campus, Hale said.
In a statement on the University of Texas-Austin's Web site, President Larry Faulkner said he was grieving Martin's loss.
"I express profound sadness over her death and sympathy for those closest to her," he said. "A teacher is a gift to life; thus we are all diminished in this moment of tragedy."
Martin, a native of New York, joined the Texas faculty in 1972 and headed the keyboard division in the School of Music.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.