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Rejected man kills three of ex-wife's family

By Lan Tian (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-12-08 21:03

A man hacked to death three members of his ex-wife's family, including two children, and injured another two after his former wife refused to resume relations with him in Chengde, Hebei province, on Monday.

The 39-year-old accused, surnamed Shi, a former taxi driver, killed his former wife’s mother and two nephews, both aged below 10, at a rented apartment in the Shaanxiying residential community in downtown Chengde at around 5 pm, a witness, surnamed Chen, told China Daily.

Shi then broke into a ward of the Chengde Central Hospital, where two of his wife's sisters were lodged, and attacked them with a kitchen knife, injuring them seriously, Chen said.

Police finally cornered Shi on the fifth floor of the hospital, even as he "repeatedly tried to injure himself with the weapon".

The suspect and the two injured are undergoing treatment at the hospital.

According to the police, the suspect is a resident of Zhoutaizi village in Luanping county.

"Shi seemed like a good man. We never thought he could murder anyone," an official of the Zhoutaizi village committee said.

Shi worked as a taxi driver in Chengde for several years. His wife had recently divorced him.

All efforts to get a comment from the police and staff at the hospital failed.

The incident follows a number of similar cases of mass killings in the country recently.

On November 23, Beijinger Li Lei hacked his parents, two children, wife and sister to death at their Daxing district home.

Li later told police the killings were a result of long-time family conflicts.

On November 15, a man broke into his girlfriend's home in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and killed five people and seriously injured two others as the family disapproved his relationship with their daughter.

"I think all the suspects in these cases suffer from psychological problems and their paranoia took them to such violent extremes," said Julie Ge, a senior counselor and CEO of the marriage counseling website Juedui100.com.

Some suspects might undergo certain experiences, which later generate hatred, she said.

Julie added: "Westerners pay as much attention to their mental health as to their physical health. But in China very few people seek psychological counseling. That's probably because of the stigma attached to seeing a psychological counselor," she said.