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Legislator turns out to be robbery suspect
By He Na and Li Fangchao (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-04-09 06:29

A directly-elected legislator in a district of Baicheng of Jilin Province turned out to be a suspect in a robbery who police had been hunting for 16 years.

The suspect, Zhang Yabin, surrendered himself to the local Public Security Bureau of Tongyu County, after someone tipped off the bureau that Zhang might have been connected to a narcotics-related robbery that had taken place in 1989.

"The people's prosecutorial office of Tongyu County has already ratified and arrested Zhang based on the investigation of the local public security bureau. He will be prosecuted as a suspect of the robbery later this month. Zhang Yabin has been taken into the custody of the Public Security Bureau of Tongyu County," according to an official from the people's prosecutorial office of Tongyu County.

Sources with the local police confirmed that Zhang was one of five robbers who held up a grocer in Sijingzi Village of Tongyu County on the night on March 10, 1989.

Records showed that they stormed into the shop and forced the owner, his wife and their daughters to bend over on the floor.

They then injected the family with chlorpromazine and made off with all their valuables.

Four of the robbers were rounded up not long after, but Zhang managed to elude his captors.

He reappeared four years later in 1992 and began working for Baoping Tow Truck Company in Baicheng City of Jilin Province.

He worked his way up the ranks to the role of door guard and then driver.

And when the position became available, Zhang became manager of one of the company's outlets.

His star continued to rise as he was elected a local member of the people's congress of Taobei District in Baicheng in 2000.

But the police were still after Zhang, and on August 13, 1999, they put his information on the Internet as a wanted suspect. He was recognized last January by a former colleague. The grocer then picked Zhang out as one of the five who robbed him that night, and recalled he had held a large knife in his hand.

Wang Naiwen, who was in charge of the case at the time, said Zhang was not head of the gang, but an accessory.

No records show that Zhang committed any other crimes in his 16 years on the run, Wang said.

The local people's congress has suspended Zhang's as a deputy, and will remove him from his seat if found guilty.



 
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