
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 1, 1994                   TAG: 9407010105
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                 LENGTH: Short

ODU STUDENT GUILTY OF RADIOACTIVE THREAT

Old Dominion University officials have changed the locks in a laboratory from which authorities contend a graduate student took a vial of mildly radioactive barium and threatened to throw it on his girlfriend.

The student, Weiping Xia, 34, an oceanography doctoral candidate from China, was found guilty Wednesday in Norfolk of misdemeanor assault and was given a suspended sentence, provided he have no contact with the woman or her family for two years. Xia faces a similar charge in Portsmouth July 5.

When Xia was arrested June 10, he was carrying in his pants pocket a small vial of barium-133, a mildly radioactive liquid used to test whether instruments are responding accurately to gamma radiation.

``In small quantities, he probably could keep the stuff on him a long time and have no effects,'' said Anthony Pulcrano, assistant director of the state Bureau of Radiological Health.

When Xia learned that his 23-year-old girlfriend, also a Chinese student at ODU, wanted to break up with him, he threatened her and her friends, said the woman, who asked that her name not be used.

``He said he would use it, would spill it on me,'' she said. ``It would have a slow effect. I was scared. Very scared.''

Xia received a master's in May but apparently kept a key to the lab.

by CNB