Man attacks kindergarten class, kills himself
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Five kindergarten class children and a teacher were injured Friday when a man attacked them with a hammer before killing himself at an east China school.
Wang Yonglai, 45, wielded a home-made hammer at five children and a teacher at 7:40 a.m. at Shangzhuang Primary School in Weifang City, Shandong Province, said a spokesman for the city government.
He then set himself on fire and died, said the spokesman.
Four boys - aged four, six and seven - and one 6-year-old girl suffered head injuries in the attack. They were all rushed to Fangzi District People's Hospital. Two were later transferred to Weifang Municipal People's Hospital, Xue Zaili, head of the emergency department of the district hospital, said.
All the kids were in stable condition, Xue said.
The foot of the teacher was injured while trying to stop Wang.
Wang soaked himself in gasoline and grabbed two injured 4-year-old boys but a female teacher, Guo Feng, snatched the kids away from him right before he set himself on fire, said the school's head teacher, Wang Fatang.
The attacker Wang was a farmer in Shangzhuang Village, Jiulong Community, in the city's Fangzi District, police said.
Wang's wife, Wang Xiulian, told Xinhua the family had spent all their savings, 110,000 yuan (16,115 U.S. dollars), building a house that was about to be torn down because it had been built on farmland, which is illegal in China.
Wang's wife said after local police told them the house would be demolished Friday, her husband rushed out on his motorcycle.
The school has 390 pupils and 52 kindergarten children.
Police are still investigating the attack, the third such attack at a school in China in the last three days.
On Thursday, 29 children and three adults were injured by a man armed with knife at the Zhongxin Kindergarten in Taixing City, in eastern Jiangsu Province.
On Wednesday, 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in southern Guangdong were attacked.
Authorities are assessing the mental state of the suspect in the school attack in Guangdong, who has been identified as a 33-year-old art teacher.
The kindergarten attacker detained in Taixing City, Jiangsu, told police he committed the attack out of anger stemming from a series of business and personal humiliations.
The married man owned eight apartments in a downtown building and was reasonably well off.
The Zhongxin Kindergarten remained closed on Friday. A crowd of 100 on-lookers still surrounded the front door of the public school.
People in the crowd said witnesses Thursday saw the suspect first attempt to enter another kindergarten nearby, but failed because it had a controlled access device.
Many Chinese cities have beefed up security on campus after the string of attacks on children.
Si Jun, a police officer in Gulou Police Station in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province's capital, said Friday the station had set up a "campus security team" composed of 70 security guards armed with batons and pepper spray.
The team under the police station would carry out security patrols in and around schools and kindergartens in Nanjing from Saturday.
The Public Security Bureau in Xicheng District, Beijing has rushed to send 300 police "forks," long poles attached to semi-circular prongs used to contain assailants, to local schools and kindergartens since Thursday.
A bureau spokesman said the weapons could arm civilian security forces in schools and improve their self-defense abilities. The bureau had also sent policemen to teach security staff and teachers how to use the weapon.
Similar police "forks" have sold out in Nanping City, southern Fujian Province, where a killer was executed Wednesday for murdering eight children outside their primary school last month. Security patrols in schools and kindergartens have been armed after the incident.
In cities like Beijing, Chengdu and Hangzhou, police cars were seen patrolling near schools and kindergartens on Friday.
In Changsha, capital of the central Hunan Province, a security patrol team of students' parents was set up in a primary school on Thursday.
Liu Weidong, a member of the team, said many parents volunteered to do the job in shifts. The patrols were encouraged by the school.
Dai Weijun, an official with the Changsha education bureau, said the bureau has asked for the government's financial support to allow every school in the city to hire security guards.
Also on Friday, the Ministry of Education released on its website an urgent circular ordering kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools to prevent strangers from entering the campus.
According to the circular, people not related to the school should register their personal information at the reception office if they want to go inside the campus.
The ministry also urged local education departments to cooperate with police in strengthening school security.
The circular came two weeks after the ministry instructed schools across the country to hire security guards, install security facilities and to make sure young students were escorted home.
Schools were urged to integrate safety awareness into the curriculum, and teach children how to protect themselves.
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