Woolwich crown court told American Joshua Michals, 25, killed Zhe Wang, 31, a Chinese student, in her bedroom. An American student murdered his Chinese partner in a “brutal and savage attack” in her bedroom, a court has heard. Joshua Michals, 25, is on trial at Woolwich crown court for the murder of Zhe Wang, 31, who was a fellow student at Goldsmiths, University of London, on 20 March 2024.
Police found Wang “face-up on her bedroom floor with two penetrating stab wounds to the face, lying in a pool of blood soaked into the carpet”, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Opening the prosecution, Henrietta Paget KC told the court: “This case concerns the killing of a young woman by a man whom she had only been seeing for a few short months. This was a brutal and savage attack, as the evidence of her injuries and from the scene plainly shows: she was killed in her own bedroom.”.
Paget told the court that Michals, of Deals Gateway, Deptford, in south-east London, had called for an ambulance at 11.08pm on 20 March 2024 and said there had been a “very serious incident” in Wang’s flat in Manor Park, Lewisham. Michals, who denies the murder charge, told the call operator that he was not present at the address and he did not think Wang was breathing.
When Michals was called back, he said there had been “a knife incident” and that “it was really bad”, the prosecutor told the court. While an ambulance was on its way, Michals told a paramedic over the phone that he had been attacked by Wang and “made comments to the effect that it would be too late to help her”.
