Suspect in pupil deaths charged with homicide
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A public prosecution was brought over the weekend against a man in Nanping, of East China's Fujian province, who allegedly stabbed eight pupils to death and injured another five.
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Former local community doctor Zheng Minsheng is accused of intentional homicide for his knife attack on students outside the gate of the Nanping Experimental Elementary School on Tuesday morning, the local procuratorate announced on Saturday.
The court hearing will soon be opened and Zheng may expect his sentence sometime in May, a local official told the Guangzhou-based newspaper New Express.
Zheng, 41, reportedly committed the crime when he found himself feeling frustrated after he broke up with his girlfriend and life seemed meaningless, said Xu Jingping, deputy head of the city's public security bureau.
A test to determine the suspect's mental state showed Zheng had no history of mental illness, according to the police.
Through interrogation the police found his motive for the brutal killings was to take revenge on society. He even admitted previously planning to kill 30 people.
"Zheng killed the children after harboring deep hatred in his heart towards two major people, his former superior, Wang Detong, at the community clinic where he used to work, and this second girlfriend surnamed Ye," a local procurator handling the case was quoted by Chengdu Business Times as having said.
"Zheng said Wang had deprived him of the chance of promotion and left him with no choice but to resign," the procurator told the paper.
"Setbacks in both his career development and personal life put him under huge pressure, making him feel a lack of social justice, which led him to take extreme revenge on innocent children," said Huang Qihui, one of Zheng's old acquaintances.
All of the five children injured in the attack regained consciousness over the weekend, said doctors at the Nanping No 1 Hospital.
"It's a blessing that my son, who received 10 knife wounds, regained consciousness. We hope he will soon recover," said Liu Xianjin, the father of Liu Luyi, one of the children injured in the attack.
The parents of the eight deceased children, more than half of whom were the only child in the family, struggled to cope with the pain of their loss.
The mother of Wu Yuxuan, one of the injured girls, said she wanted to thank those at the scene of the attack who helped to save the injured children.
"Without them, I might have lost my daughter," she told Xinhua News Agency at the hospital's intensive care unit.
"The whole incident happened in 55 seconds, so it was impossible for the police to arrive. Some ordinary people there did the right thing," said Chen Jixiong, a teacher at the school.
A man with a purple motorcycle helmet, who was the first to challenge the killer, has been singled out for special praise over the Internet, Xinhua reported.
Ying Changyu, 34, was eating breakfast in a nearby snack bar after taking his daughter to school on Tuesday morning when someone shouted, "Help!"
Ying rushed to the school gate and took off his helmet to hit the killer, shouting, "Are you a human being? Why did you kill these kids?"
Ying's heroic act distracted the killer and was instrumental in saving the lives of other children.
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