A Staten Island native who was formerly an NYPD officer was sentenced to 27 years in prison on Wednesday. The incident occurred in 2021 while the woman was off-duty. Armed with her police-issued pistol, she waited in her ex-girlfriend’s Brooklyn apartment until she returned home and fatally shot the surviving victim’s new love interest.
According to the New York Attorney General’s Office, Yvonne Wu, now 34, was sentenced in Kings County to 22 years of state prison for first-degree manslaughter in the October 13, 2021, love triangle killing of 24-year-old Jamie Liang, a dental student at NYU, plus an additional five years for trying to kill her former partner Jenny Li.
Wu entered a guilty plea in June, and it became evident that the case would result in a sentence of about thirty years.
Wu “confessed” in a “calm, collected” manner that she was the offender, according to local press reports from the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which was called a love triangle incident.
According to the NYPD, cellphone footage revealed that Wu was taken into custody outside her ex-husband’s 19th Avenue home in broad daylight that fateful afternoon when Liang was shot in the chest and Li in the torso.
A friend of Li’s who talked with the New York Daily News described Wu, who had been an NYPD officer for five and a half years at the time of the killing, as a “psychopath” and a “possessive” stalker. According to the buddy, the defendant had been dumped a month prior and responded to the breakup by showing up at Li’s house and waiting in the bedroom for the victims to return.
Wu yelled, “I told you not to mess with me” and “That’s what you get,” while her 23-year-old, injured ex-girlfriend dialled 911 from the scene of Li’s fatal shooting.
Liang was described as a dental student at NYU with a “bright future ahead” in an old GoFundMe campaign.
A message on the campaign wrote, “She was loved by so many and filled every room with her kindness and lively spirit.”
Liang’s father stated that his daughter “loved life, she got a big heart, [and] she loved everyone” in an interview with the local ABC affiliate WABC.
“She always wanted to make me proud, and I’m always proud of her,” Ying Ling reportedly said. “Jamie, ever since she was a baby, she was so good. I never had to worry about her.”
