WASHINGTON ? A Chinese man pleaded guilty on Monday to decapitating a fellow graduate student in January at a campus cafe at Virginia Tech university in the United States, court records showed.

Zhu Haiyang, a 26-year-old from Ningbo in eastern China, will be sentenced on April 19 for the first-degree murder of Yang Xin, a 22-year-old graduate student from Beijing, the documents said.

He reportedly faces up to life in prison.

Witnesses said there was no shouting or apparent argument at the Au Bon Pain restaurant before Zhu horrifically murdered Yang on January 21 using a large kitchen knife.

In a copy of a police affidavit published by local newspaper The Collegiate Times, the officer said that when she arrived at the scene she found Zhu holding Yang's head in his hand.

Virginia Tech was the scene of the worst school shooting in US history in 2007 when Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student born in South Korea, shot 32 fellow classmates and teachers to death before killing himself.

Yang had arrived at Virginia Tech in early January to begin studies in accounting. Zhu was a PhD graduate student in agriculture and applied economics.