Wood County Prosecuting Attorney Paul Dobson announced today that Xiaosong Wang, 63, pled guilty in front of Wood County Common Pleas Judge Joel Kuhlman for the Sept. 17, 2023, shooting deaths of Zhichun Huang, 36, and Bing Luan Lin, 40, owners of Ninja Hibachi Sushi Steak House in Bowling Green.
Wang’s shooting spree also resulted in the wounding of a co-worker. An eight-day trial on the matter was scheduled to begin on Sept. 9. Wang, a Chinese foreign national, pled to all of the charges in the indictment, which included two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of murder, three counts each of attempted murder and felonious assault, and two counts of possession of criminal tools.
Dobson agreed to forgo recommending life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and to agree that all of the attempted murder and felonious assault charges merged into one count for purposes of sentencing. Aside from these agreements, both parties were free to make recommendations at sentencing. By operation of law, the murder charges will merge into the aggravated murder charges.
The sentence for aggravated murder is life imprisonment. For aggravated murder, a judge can order that the defendant must serve 20, 25 or 30 years before having an opportunity to petition the Ohio parole board for release on parole. The court can also order that the defendant have no opportunity to petition the parole board.
The other merged charges will result in Wang being sentenced for attempted murder, a felony of the first degree. This exposes Wang to an additional 3 to 11 year sentence. The possession of criminal tools charges are fifth degree felonies, carrying a maximum sentence each of one year in prison. Attached to all of the charges but the last two are specifications that Wang used a firearm in the commission of the offense. Each of these can add another three years to the sentence.
The incident erupted near midnight in a quiet Bowling Green neighborhood when Wang was informed by the owners that he was being fired after an altercation with another employee at the restaurant. The restaurant owners had purchased a residence in Bowling Green which was used by the restaurant staff as living quarters.
When one of the owners attempted to give Wang his final check and evict him from the premises, Wang objected and attempted to get to one of the other owners in the house. When Wang was pushed back, he drew one of the two guns he had in his pockets and shot the owner. He then turned and shot the second owner, striking him several times as he stood in his bedroom. After shooting both men, Wang moved through the house and shot at least two more times, wounding a co-worker. He then proceeded outside where he fired more rounds.
In discussing the plea agreement, Dobson said, “It has always been our aim that Mr. Wang would never see life outside of a prison again. This plea agreement gives us the same ability to do that which we would have had if we had gone to trial. The defendant is 63 years old. The very minimum sentence the court could give, either through his plea or had he been convicted of everything after a trial, is 26 years. We will certainly be arguing for more than that. In our view any sentence offers only the slimmest chance that he could ever make it to the parole board. We can still recommend a sentence that puts him in prison for 80 years before seeing the parole board. We have discussed this with the families and believe that we have given up, essentially, nothing. What we have gained is closure for the families and the victims while avoiding re-traumatizing some of them by making them relive that night on the witness stand.”
Wang has been at the Wood County Justice Center since he was apprehended by responding Bowling Green police officers the night of the incident. At that time, police removed from Wang two handguns and approximately seven more loaded magazines.
“I want to thank the Bowling Green Police Department,” Dobson said. “As unimaginably tragic as this night was, it is likely that the quick response and assessment of the situation by responding officers, which included immediately identifying and securing Xiaosong Wang, prevented the injury or loss of life of more people.”
Wang’s status in the United States is unclear. It appears his original work visa may have expired, although he said during the plea that he had applied for a green card. He indicated it had not been granted at the time of the incident. He will continue to be held in the jail until his sentencing on Oct. 24 at 2:30 p.m.
