BRAMPTON, Ont. (CP) - A man has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Cecilia Zhang, the nine-year-old schoolgirl who vanished from her home last October, police confirmed Thursday.
Min Chen, 21, a visa student from China, has been charged with first-degree murder, said Peel police Chief Noel Catney. "Yes, there is some satisfaction, there is some elation," Catney told a packed news conference at police headquarters in this city north of Toronto.
"But without question, it is superseded still by our sadness and by our loss."
Cecilia, a gifted Grade 4 student, was apparently snatched from her bedroom in a daring early-morning abduction, triggering a search that stretched around the world. Her remains were found in late March in a wooded area near a church in nearby Mississauga.
Chen made a brief court appearance Thursday, arriving at the Brampton courthouse in the back seat of a police cruiser, dressed in a white jumpsuit with a hood covering much of his face, his head slung low.
Catney, holding up a picture of the bespectacled Chen, said the man was arrested Thursday at his home in suburban Toronto.
Catney said Chen has been in Canada on a student visa from Shanghai since 2001.
The little girl disappeared Oct. 20 from her family's Toronto home in a baffling case that has pulled at the heartstrings of the city, including the Chinese community which led a drive to raise tens of thousands of dollars in reward money.
Police allege the kidnapper broke into a second-storey window of the home at 3:30 a.m., taking Cecilia out of the house through a side door.
Catney said the case has been one of the emotional he's ever dealt with in his years as an officer.
"I truly and honestly have never seen a group of more dedicated, hard-working, compassionate people," he said.
"When the purest form of innocence is violated, there's sadness, there's anger, there's regret, and that's the mood I sense in this case."
Catney described the case as "global in nature," noting the arrests are the result of working with police in mainland China, the FBI, and other police agencies across Canada and the United States.
In the weeks after Cecilia was reported missing, police were working from the theory that the gifted young schoolgirl was the victim of an abduction for profit.
The investigation quickly turned from a door-to-door canvass of the area surrounding the family home in northeast Toronto, to an international probe where local investigators were working with police in Asia.
Her story was featured on the crime show America's Most Wanted last November, resulting in more than a dozen tips from both Canada and the United States coming in with a day of the broadcast.
Police focused much of their attention on interviewing dozens of current and former tenants in the home of Zhang, a computer programmer, and Xu, who was running a combination day care and language school.
Zhang and Xu withdrew from any media and public attention shortly after their daughter's disappearance, but a week later their impassioned public pleas put a visible face on the pain and agony suffered by parents of missing children.
The couple searched in vain for their only child for months, aimlessly driving along city streets looking for her in the weeks following her abduction. They also launched a website in Cecilia's name with hopes of attracting information about her disappearance.
At one point early in the investigation, police were following more than 1,000 tips that poured into a special hotline.
The search ended in tragedy in late March when Cecilia's skeletal remains were discovered in a heavily wooded area near a church parking lot in Mississauga, not far from Brampton and about 50 kilometres west of the Zhangs' home.
