Chinese woman killed on webcam was stalked: friend

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A Chinese student in Canada whose likely murder may have been captured by a webcam was being stalked, a friend claimed on Tuesday.

Police identified the victim as 23-year-old Liu Qian.

She had been chatting online with a friend overseas when a man in his 20s with a muscular build and medium-length brown hair knocked at her door and asked to use her cell phone.

An assailant was seen through the lens of the webcam struggling with Liu in her basement apartment near York University in Toronto at about 1:00 am (0500 GMT) on Friday.

The online witness saw part of it, but some of the action took place out of the camera's scope. The assailant then turned off the laptop computer, which is now missing. Hours later, her body was discovered by police.

A man identified only as a friend of Liu posted on a Toronto-based Chinese-language chat room that ‘the suspect once shared the same house with Liu’ and had been ‘chasing after her.’

When she rebuffed his advances, the suspect ‘then started stalking her by texting her all the time,’ the friend wrote in the chat room cited by the daily Toronto Star.

He also said the online witness Liu was chatting with via the webcam was actually her boyfriend of seven years.

Toronto police sergeant Frank Skubic said it was "not clear" if Liu knew her attacker. He said investigators spoke with her former roommate and "he did cooperate."

Public broadcaster CBC had said the victim's mother contacted the Chinese consulate in Toronto, which alerted local authorities.

Police said there were no signs of ‘substantial trauma’ to the body that could identify the cause of death, nor any ‘obvious’ signs of sexual assault.

However, she was unclothed from the waist down.