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Linda Trinh’s Killer Sentenced

By Angela Paik Schaeffer

In January, after pleading guilty to the murder of Hopkins student Linda Trinh, Donta Maurice Allen received a life sentence in Baltimore Circuit Court. Trinh was a 21-year-old biomedical engineering student at the time of the January 2005 killing in her off-campus apartment in Charles Village.

During the sentencing, Allen apologized to the Trinh family and the students of Johns Hopkins, saying he deserved a life sentence. On the eve of his trial last November, Allen, 28, admitted that he killed Trinh during a burglary attempt in her residence in the Charles Apartments, at that time a privately owned building. The university purchased the building in February 2006. In exchange for the guilty plea, Allen could be eligible for parole in about 111/2 years.

In response to the crime, the university immediately increased security on and around campus, and set forth on a comprehensive security enhancement plan to put Hopkins at the forefront of campus protection nationwide. Changes include an increase in uniformed security officers and in closed-circuit TV cameras (a total of 78 on and around campus), as well as a unique communications arrangement with city police that ensures direct contact between Homewood officers and city police dispatchers.