Chinese teenager kills 9 in 'stabbing spree'

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Nine killed as teen goes on stabbing spree
AFP
August 03, 2012

A teenager has been arrested after killing nine people and wounding four others in a knife attack in northeast China, state media reported yesterday. The 17-year-old, identified only by his surname Li, barged into the home of his girlfriend armed with a knife following an argument and killed two of her relatives, the Legal Daily said. As he left his girlfriend's home in Liaoning province's Xinbin county, he stabbed six more people to death and wounded five. One of the injured died in hospital yesterday.

Li was arrested near the scene of the attack, late on Wednesday and was taken into custody, Xinhua News Agency reported. Police had nabbed him as he was preparing to jump from a building in an apparent suicide attempt, it added.

Violent crime has been on the rise in the mainland in recent decades as the country's economy boomed and the gulf between the rich and the poor expanded at an alarming pace. Experts say the increase in assaults shows China is paying the price for focusing on economic growth for more than 30 years while ignoring problems linked to rapid social change. Studies have described a rise in the prevalence of mental disorders in China, some of them linked to stress as the pace of life becomes faster and socialist support systems wither. However, authorities stress that murder, which carries the death penalty, remains far less common than in most Western countries.

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Chinese school attack leaves three children dead
Three children were killed and 13 injured when a mental patient attacked a play group in China.
Malcolm Moore,
21 Sep 2012,
telegraph.co.uk

The attack occurred in Pingnan, a town of around 520,000 people by the banks of the Yujiang river in Guangxi, a region of southern China near the border with Vietnam. A brief initial report from Xinhua, the state news agency, said a man named Mr Wu, a schizophrenic, broke into a residential building in Pingnan that was being used as a day care centre. A group of children aged between six and 12 years old were inside during their lunch break from a nearby primary school.

Using a wood chopper, Mr Wu killed three and injured a further 13 children. Their ages and identities have not yet been confirmed. Mr Wu was arrested on the scene, but no motivation for the attack has yet been given. Photographs from the scene showed a large group of parents clustered around the building, and small children being treated for severe injuries in hospital.

In 2010, China saw five separate attacks on school children. At one point, three different kindergartens were attacked in three days after an initial incident triggered copycat attacks. In the worst attack, a 48-year-old man killed seven children and two women with a kitchen cleaver at a kindergarten in Shaanxi province in north west China, before committing suicide. In the other cases, attackers used hammers, knives and petrol to kill and injure scores of other children. Almost all the attacks were by middle-aged men who were either mentally unstable or nursing some grievance against society.

The spate of violence horrified Chinese parents and the government moved quickly to bolster security at schools.