The Vancouver Police Department announced Monday morning the arrest of 25-year-old Matthew Scott, who faces a second-degree murder charge in the 2011 death of Melanie Alexis O'Neill, a Simon Fraser University professor.
On July 26, 2011, around 10 p.m., police discovered O'Neill's body in her residence, one of three suites of a home in the 100-block of West 13th Avenue in Vancouver.
A concerned acquaintance had asked police to check on her welfare after not having heard from her lately, said Vancouver police spokesman Const. Lindsey Houghton.
According to SFU's website, O'Neill was an associate professor in biophysical and biological chemistry at SFU. She earned her PhD at Dalhousie University in 2001 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 2001 to 2004.
Jon Driver, academic vice-president and acting president at SFU, told the Burnaby NOW last summer that the news had hit the university community hard.
"We are shocked and saddened by the news," said Driver. "Whenever you lose a young colleague, the feeling is of complete and utter shock."
Driver said O'Neill was on study leave at the time of her death and, to the best of his knowledge, had not taught a class at the university since the fall of 2010.
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