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A Chinese student was shot in his lodgings in Yale Town, central Vancouver, Canada, on August 26 evening. One of his two roommates got missing soon after the accident, and the local police called the missing man to turn up as soon as possible to help the investigations.
Around 9 o'clock that day evening the police received report and rushed to the victim's tenth-story lodgings on the Haibin road, finding the 23-year-old already dead, according to reports of the Chinese Daily News, a US-based, Chinese-language newspaper. Huge gun shots were reported from neighbors, and the victim's body was moved away in the next morning. A pistol was found at the scene.
As know later, the lodgings are taken by three Chinese students. One of the victim's roommates called the police, and the other, 22-year-old Shi Zhe (pronunciation) got missing soon after the accident. The police doesn't rule out the possible that Shi Zhe has much knowledge about the whole case, so they released Shi's photo, hoping the public may help to find out his whereabouts so as to help investigation.
Hearing the news, China's general consulate in Vancouver immediately contacted the local police, trying to find out the victim's personal information such as name, identity and passport number so as to inform his relatives in China. But the Vancouver police didn't provide the consulate with his name and passport number that very day, according to consul Zhou Yong.
Zhou also said that more than an average of 8000 students comes to Vancouver from China every year, and recent years saw rising accidents involving Asian students in Canada, which also cast a shadow in hears of those who are preparing for going abroad.
Among criminal cases involving Chinese students this year, Tao Lin, a 19-year-old girl from Wuhan, was killed on evening of February 10, in Toronto. The murderer is still at large.
Yan Xiaosheng, manager of a Beijing-based construction company, whose son is studying in London, said that as a parent he was thankful that his child has the opportunity to study overseas. "But I am also more concerned about his safety, and I know that the parents of those hundreds of thousands of students studying abroad are concerned as well," he said.
Statistics show that the number of Chinese teenager students studying abroad grew at an annual rate of 40 per cent in the last three years. The number is expected to reach 50,000 this year and exceed 100,000 by 2005.
(People's Daily August 29, 2002)
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