Chinese man gets death sentence for stabbing murders of 8 schoolchildren

Chinese man gets death sentence in child murders

BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced a former medical worker to death Thursday for the stabbing murders of eight children as they waited with their parents to enter their elementary school a little more than two weeks ago.

The Intermediate People’s Court in Nanping city in southern Fujian province handed down the sentence to Zheng Minsheng after a four-hour trial, in which the official Xinhua News Agency said Zheng admitted “intentionally killing” the children.

The randomness of the March 23 attacks and the fact that the victims were schoolchildren shocked China. The victims’ ages have not been given, but Chinese elementary schools typically have students aged 6 to 12.

Xinhua said prosecutors played 55 seconds of video footage showing Zheng stabbing the children. The knife and bloodstained clothing were also entered as evidence. It was unclear where the video footage came from, though it could have been from a security camera.

A man who answered the telephone at the court Thursday confirmed that the trial took place but would not give any details or his name.

It said Zheng told the court he was “willing to shoulder responsibility for what I’ve done.”

Zheng, 41, struck in the morning as students arrived for classes, mingling with parents at the school gates before suddenly pulling out his knife and slashing children, according to witnesses interviewed at the time on local television.

In the aftermath, doctors treated small children and bodies lay covered in bloody sheets after the attack at Nanping City Experimental Elementary School. Five other children were wounded in the attack, and one is still in serious condition in hospital.

Xinhua reported that Zheng was agitated in the court and repeatedly said he had been rejected by a woman and treated unfairly by her wealthy family.

Xinhua identified Zheng as a doctor, although his official government-issued identity card said he had only a technical school education.

It quoted police as saying Zheng did not have a history of mental problems.

China has witnessed a series of school attacks in recent years, most blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness, leading to calls for improved security.

Recent school attacks include a July 2007 assault in which a mentally ill man wielding a wrench wounded 18 children and a teacher in a kindergarten in southern China before fleeing on a motorcycle and trying to stab himself to death.

In June the same year, a man slashed four students, wounding one seriously, in a high school in the southeastern city of Fuzhou, while elsewhere, police shot dead a suspected mentally ill man who threatened to blow up a school in southern China with dynamite.

China’s worst such incident in March 2001 destroyed a schoolhouse and killed at least 42 people, most of them children. Officials blamed a mentally ill man who charged into the school in Jiangxi province with a bag full of dynamite. Parents disputed that, claiming their children had been forced to make fireworks at the school.