Chinese protestor charged over LA consulate shooting

A Chinese-born activist was charged with firing shots at China's consulate in Los Angeles following a human rights protest outside the building last week, police said. Jeff Baoliang Zhang, a 67-year-old originally from Shanghai, turned himself in to police a few hours after last Thursday's shooting, which left a number of bullet holes in the front of the diplomatic building. He was initially booked for attempted murder, for allegedly firing a 9mm handgun at a security guard, but he was charged on Monday with assault with a semiautomatic firearm and shooting at an inhabited dwelling, prosecutors said. He was being held in a Los Angeles Police Department detention center in lieu of $100,000 bail, but prosecutors want him to be jailed without bail, said deputy district attorney John Gilligan. If convicted, Zhang faces more than 20 years in state prison, prosecutors said. Zhang was "part of a small protest related to human rights in mainland China. Acting independently from the other protesters, he opened fire on the consulate building and then drove away in his car," an LAPD spokesman said. The security guard involved, Cipriano Gutierrez, said he feared for his life in the shooting, which occurred when about 20 people were inside the consular building. "I hit the ground and I was praying," he said, according to the local CBS affiliate TV station. "I grabbed phone books and put them over my head. A bullet came in the room right next to my knee." Zhang, a Chinese-American who lives in Las Vegas, is the author of a book entitled "Accusing the American Judicial System of Rampant Corruption," according to a Chinese activist leader in Los Angeles, Ann Lau. He was an English and tourism teacher for the Department of Tour Guides and Interpreters at the Shanghai Institute of Tourism before coming to the US in 1986, according to his resume linked to his book on retail website Amazon. He studied at New York University and obtained a doctoral degree in 1996. He also studied for two years on an MBA program at the university's Graduate School for Business, it said.