Society
Latest attacker has 'history of mental illness'
By YAN JIE AND HUANG FEIFEI (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-14 07:48
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Assaults not targeted at school children, say police
BEIHAI, Guangxi - The deadly stabbings in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Monday were not aimed at school children, but were random assaults by a man who had been reported as being mentally ill, local authorities said on Tuesday.
The case has rekindled public outcry for tighter campus security after the killings of eight pupils in front of a primary school's gate in Fujian province last month.
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Wu Junpei, a second-grade student, and an 82-year-old woman surnamed Yu were killed, with five others injured, who are being treated at a local hospital.
"Three pupils passed by the door of the suspect's home after classes and unfortunately they became targets," He Laiguo, chief of the police department in Hepu, told China Daily.
This was the first scene in the case, about 500 meters from a nearby primary school, He said.
The five locations where the attacks took place are in the village, and not at the school, he said.
Yang has been put under criminal detention, police said, adding that further investigations are under way.
After negotiations with the dead school boy's family, the town government has offered 15,000 yuan ($2,200) in cash as relief funds.
The five injured villagers have undergone surgeries and are in stable condition, reported the Xinhua News Agency. Three of them had serious wounds and needed further treatments, Xu added, referring to a couple and another 7-year-old boy.
Preliminary investigations showed Yang had been identified as being mentally ill by his family as early as September 2005.
Yang received psychiatric examinations and treatments at a local hospital in the same month and in June 2008, when he was diagnosed with reactive psychosis.
But the police have yet to confirm whether Yang was insane when he committed the crimes, said Chen Qi, deputy county head and chief of the publicity department in Hepu. Yang had inflicted injuries on the victims' heads and necks, Chen added.
A boy was hacked in the neck by a cleaver and fell to the ground, Yu Xingye, a witness of the crimes, told local media on Monday evening.
In addition, Chen and He, the county police chief, confirmed that Yang had opened a clinic in the village years ago, but they did not know if the clinic had been licensed and when it was closed.
Local authorities will ask psychiatrists to examine and assess Yang's mental state.
Officials also said at the press conference that three days before Yang went on the stabbing spree, he had injured a neighbor in the head after his father had an argument with that neighbor.
The police were called after the incident. Yang's family cited his mental illness and decided on Monday that they would take him to a local hospital for inpatient treatments.
Local officials said they would attempt to prevent potential criminal acts by mentally ill residents in the county by looking for those without proper care and taking them to psychiatric hospitals.
The attack in Guangxi came almost three weeks after students were stabbed outside a primary school in Nanping city of East China's Fujian province.
Huang Zhaohua contributed to this story.
CHINA DAILY
