Funeral services are being planned in Naperville for 21-year-old Eva Liu, who was remembered with a moment of silence at Tuesday’s Naperville City Council meeting nearly a week after she was attacked and thrown down a 165-foot ravine in Germany.
Liu and her longtime friend, Kelsey Chang, 22, of Bloomington, were on vacation when they were lured off a path near the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria by an as-yet unnamed 30-year-old man from Michigan now being held on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and attempted sexual assault, authorities said.
Chang was also tossed into the ravine in the June 14 attack but survived after falling on a tree, reports said. She was released from the hospital Sunday and was flying home Tuesday, according to her father, Weihan Chang, of Normal.
He hasn’t been able to talk with his daughter very much since the attack occurred, he said, but it was devastating for her.
“She’s pretty damaged by the incident,” Chang said. “It’s life-changing.”
Mark Zhang, pastor of Living Water Evangelical Church in Naperville, where Liu’s parents are members, said her father is in Germany arranging for his daughter’s body to be returned home as the church prepares for the funeral and burial. No dates for the services have been scheduled.
Zhang said congregants are “so saddened and shocked” by what occurred to Liu, a May graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He hosted a small gathering last week for those who wanted to sing, pray and share in the mourning.
“As Christians, when one member suffers, we stand with the family and pray. We pray for God’s comfort in this unbearable pain and loss,” Zhang said. “The most important thing they need right now is prayer.”
The church also is organizing the delivery of meals.
Zhang said the Liu family emigrated from Canada, and both Eva Liu and her twin sister were “very sweet” and participated in the church’s youth group when they were younger.
In recent years, the sisters were at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora and then college, so they weren’t attending the church, he said.
Liu and Chang were both graduates of the academy and U of I, where they completed bachelor’s degrees in computer science and were board members for the student chapter of Women in CyberSecurity.
The pair were visiting Neuschwanstein Castle, an attraction upon which Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland and Disney World are said to have been based. It’s a location that draws more than a million visitors annually.
News reports said the two women were staying at the same hotel as the suspect but did not know him.
Liu was attacked first, and Chang thrown from the cliff when she tried to stop him, according to German police. The suspect also tried to sexually assault Liu before throwing her over the same sleep slope, reports said.
Naperville resident Nancy Chen said she and other Chinese Americans in the community planned to attend the Naperville City Council meeting for the planned moment of silence in Liu’s memory.
Mayor Scott Wehrli reached out to her over the weekend to see if she knew Liu or had suggestions for how to honor her, she said.
While Chen didn’t know the family, the gesture was a “really nice” way to acknowledge the young woman, she said.
“We don’t want to be intrusive at this time,” said Chen, who’s the founder and president of Chinese American Women in Action, known as CAWA. “We want to respect (the family’s) privacy.”
Bringing people together in a time of loss is important, she said. News of the tragedy is something that’s felt beyond the Chinese American community.
“We can all relate to that. She could be anybody’s daughter, sister or granddaughter,” Chen said. “As a woman and as a mother, I felt deeply about this.”
Tami Armstrong, the math and science academy’s chief public affairs and development officer, said in a statement that Liu was a dedicated, academically talented and involved student. She served as a student leader in her residence hall and coordinated programming for her peers, fostering a safe and supportive environment, she said.
As a member of the Student Planning Committee for the 2018 International Student Science Fair held on the IMSA campus, Liu helped with programming for 250 students from 32 different countries.
She also was an adept student researcher and participated in IMSA’s student inquiry and research program with Northwestern University, where she studied the effects of high levels of carbon dioxide on the proliferation of skeletal muscle stem cells.
“On behalf of our administration, faculty and staff, we are saddened by this loss and we grieve for and with her family and loved ones. The loss of any student, particularly in such a tragic way, deeply hurts us all,” Armstrong said.
Liu had completed a software engineering internship at Microsoft last year and had been working as a teaching assistant for University of Illinois’ Engineering City Scholars program in Chicago, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“Both had just graduated in May and should have been able to celebrate such an important accomplishment without the fear of such a tragic outcome,” U. of I. Associate Chancellor Robin Kaler said in response to Liu’s death.
Thomas Hörmann, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office in Kempten, Germany, said the investigation into the attack is ongoing but it could be three or four months before authorities decide on an indictment.
The Associated Press contributed.
