USC student accused of serial rapes and drugging women in Southern California, LAPD says

A USC graduate student who used drugs to rape and assault multiple women is accused of being a serial sexual predator and authorities are looking for additional victims, Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Wednesday.

Sizhe Weng, 33, is being held without bail after being arrested and charged with eight felonies involving drug-facilitated sexual assault against young women he came into contact with since beginning his studies at the University of Southern California in 2021.

LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said at a news conference that the department began investigating Weng in January after being contacted by German authorities regarding a similar investigation in Europe involving a Chinese national who they learned was a student who had lived in Los Angeles for several years. Ultimately, information developed by the LAPD and German authorities led detectives to execute a search warrant at Weng’s home in South LA, near the USC campus, Hamilton said.

Hamilton said detectives arrested Weng on Aug. 28 for rape of an intoxicated person and searched his home.

On Sept. 2, Weng was charged with eight felony counts of rape, sodomy, sexual penetration with drugs and anesthesia, Hamilton said. Weng pleaded not guilty.

Hamilton, who supervises LAPD detectives, said they strongly suspect there are additional victims and are encouraging them to come forward.

“If you have had any contact with this individual, if you are otherwise connected to him, our Robbery Homicide detectives would like to interview you about his actions,” Hamilton said.

Those alleged victims could be in LA and beyond, he said. “As soon as we became aware of actionable information, we opened an investigation,” Hamilton said. “It took us a while to keep track of all the activities this person has been doing in LA.”

Hamilton said he wouldn’t specify which drugs were involved, but essentially it made the consumer physically incapacitated and was similar in real terms to the date rape drug commonly called a roofie.

Although Weng had been on a student visa in California since 2021, Hamilton said the department cannot be certain he was not in the area before that and therefore has not ruled out incidents in previous years.