CAL U senior Edgar Vila has been detained as a suspect in the disappearance and possible homicide of CAL U junior Yelin “Laura” Song, the police announced this morning. Vila was one of the last two witnesses to see last Monday night.
Vila is a member of the Gamma Beta Alpha fraternity and active in the campus Latinx student organization La Familia de CAL U that has been staging high-profile street protests, both on campus and in downtown LA, in support of immediate immigration policy reform and protesting ICE enforcement brutalities. He is also the campus liaison for a national youth organization for immigrant protection that advocates the use of high-impact media tactics to capture public attention. Song and Vila began dating at the end of Song’s freshman year, according to CAL U junior and Song’s sorority sister Amy Guo. Until recently, Vila held a paid internship position in Alex Song’s law offices, and had only recently left the job when he took on the leadership of La Familia.
“Laura and Edgar had an on-again-off-again relationship,” said Guo. “They were both really social, I mean they went out a lot on weekends, sometimes together, sometimes not.”
Conflicting accounts of the relationship between Song and Vila have emerged in the days since the former Miss Chinatown’s disappearance and suspected murder. One member of the Gamma Beta Alpha fraternity who asked not to be named for this article suggested that Vila had become increasingly concerned about Song’s involvement with a LA Chinatown-headquartered restaurant franchise rumored to have underworld connections. “Edgar was always trying to get her to cut off her involvement with those
shady restaurant gangsters, but she was so into the thrill of it, I guess,” said the Gamma Beta Alpha member. “Yeah they fought. But if people heard Edgar yelling at her, I bet it was over that. He was just really worried about what she’d gotten herself into.”
Many of Song’s friends dispute this version of her relationship with Vila. Several of them also immediately pointed out that the CAL U chapter of Gamma Beta Alpha is in fact currently on probation and forced to congregate off-campus, due to several outstanding sexual harassment and provision of alcohol to minors charges against the fraternity. Rumors of Laura’s romantic entanglement with one of the owners of the restaurant in question, The Lucky Dragon, and of Vila’s jealousy had been circulating for weeks, according to Stacey Lee, one of Song’s classmates. “All that stuff about triads is just ‘exotic Orient’ crap,” emphasized Lee with air quotes and an eyeroll. “This was really about a love triangle.”
A demonstration to protest Vila’s detention is scheduled for 4pm today outside of city hall, according to La Familia de CAL U spokesperson Daniel Gallegos.
“Edgar’s unjustified arrest only compounds this tragedy,” said Gallegos. “We were all deeply shocked and saddened by Laura’s murder. But what this racially motivated persecution makes clear is that different ethnic groups attract different kinds of attention from the authorities, whether it be the LAPD or the CAL U administration. And it’s no coincidence that Edgar, who has given the administration a lot of headaches with his political protests and advocacy work, would have a finger pointed at him right away.”
The CAL U President’s office has refused to comment on the details of the case. In a statement released yesterday evening, that office has acknowledged that the incident has exacerbated tensions on campus. Promising to cooperate fully with the investigation, the statement also urged students and community members to be “sensitive to the strong feelings this tragedy has provoked, especially in the Asian and Latino communities both on and off campus.”
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