UC Irvine
social sciences

Mother and son found dead on University of California Irvine campus in apparent murder-suicide

Dec. 14, 2022
Police say a former UC Irvine student threw his mother off a roof and then jumped to his death.

A former University of California Irvine student is believed to have thrown his mother from a building on campus before jumping to his death on Tuesday. Authorities are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the bodies of Andrew Nguyen Doan, 36, and Thao Thi Nguyen, 77, both of Irvine, were found in a plaza in the School of Social Sciences.

“The investigation has determined Doan picked up Nguyen and threw her off the landing of a multistory building,” police said. “Doan then jumped from the same landing to his death.”

Doan was a biological sciences major at UC Irvine from September 2017 to June 2019; he did not graduate, according to a university spokesman.

Campus police received several 911 calls reporting two people on the ground in front of a building just before 4 p.m. Tuesday, Irvine police said.

A motive has not been determined for the incident, but police said they had contacted Doan “multiple times in the past,” most recently in 2019 for “mental health concerns.”

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Mike Kennedy | Senior Editor

Mike Kennedy, senior editor, has written for AS&U on a wide range of educational issues since 1999.

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