If Christensen, 29, is convicted, jurors would decide whether they think he should be executed. She had just missed a bus when Christensen tricked or forced her into his car, prosecutors say. Her parents told The Associated Press in 2017 that her last entry was: "Life is too short to be ordinary." Zhang's father, mother and brother flew in from China for the trial, which they will watch remotely via closed-circuit video in a courtroom in Champaign. ———An earlier version of this story was corrected to fix the spelling of Brendt Christensen's first name, which had been misspelled "Brent."

Source: ABC News June 02, 2019 18:32 UTC