News 14 Carolina's Aaron Mesmer has more on what Irina's family and UNCC student leaders want to do to prevent future crimes.
CHARLOTTE -- The family of Irina Yarmolenko is using the UNC Charlotte student's death as a way to reach out to people across the country. They're working with the university to set up an organization they hope will increase crime prevention and campus safety.
"I think ultimately I have this feeling they will find who's responsible for this," her brother, Pavel, said.
While investigators search for the 20-year-old's killer, her family is looking for ways to keep her memory alive.
"We've arrived at this idea that most of this future crime we can have a very positive effect on it by having interactions with kids in those communities," Pavel explained.
Pavel Yarmolenko sat down with UNC Charlotte's student body president Tim Ernst at the coffee shop where Irina was last seen.
On Tuesday, Pavel sat down with UNC Charlotte's student body president Tim Ernst to lay the groundwork for what they're hoping will be a national organization that works to help smaller crime-prevention groups.
"A lot of times, when a crime like this happens, you have a very helpless feeling,” Ernst said. “And this is a way you can feel like you're effecting change."
And as the family struggles to adjust to the change in their lives, they say this is a way for them to begin a healing process in the community, and in themselves.
"Anybody who has information has the ability to do something,” Irina’s cousin Natalia Deyneka said. “So I don't think this is the time to really shell up."
"I believe that we're strong enough not to only overcome, but to prevent," said her mother, Yelena Vasina.
Investigators are still looking into what happened the day Yarmolenko died. An autopsy report showed she had been suffocated.