Man stabs his mother, wife, daughter and 5 other people in China’s latest bloody rampage

Man stabs 8 to death in latest China rampage

BEIJING — A Chinese man on a stabbing rampage killed eight people in the country’s southeast, including his mother, wife and daughter, police and new reports said Sunday.

The motive in Saturday night’s stabbing was not immediately clear.

The official Xinhua News Agency cited witnesses as saying the man killed his 10-year-old daughter and then his 83-year-old mother, who was kneeling and begging to be spared.

He then killed his wife and two other people in a neighboring home, a nearby migrant worker and two villagers running from the scene, the report said.

Xinhua said suspect Zhou Yezhong was caught within two hours of the stabbings in the southeastern province of Jiangxi.

China has been shaken in recent weeks by multiple cases of mass violence, including attacks on children at schools. Some have been blamed on the attackers’ mental illness and others on the pressures of a rapidly changing society and a lack of a strong social support system.

Because of the concerns, the central government has ordered tighter security at schools across the country.

A man answering telephones at the police station in Badu town, where the latest stabbings occurred, confirmed the attacks but did not give details. He did not give his name.

Police offices at Jishui county and the provincial level did not answer phone calls.

Other media reports mirrored the Xinhua account of the attack.