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September 6, 2011

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7 victims in village killing spree

SEVEN people, including a seven-year-old girl and a woman pregnant with twins, died in a killing spree in Shanghai's neighboring Jiangsu Province, police said yesterday.

The suspect, a 32-year-old man surnamed Zheng from Jiangsu's Guanyun County, gave himself up to police on Sunday and admitted to killing the seven, all relatives of a friend who he thought was having an affair with his wife, police said.

The killings were believed to have begun at around 11pm on Saturday in Xuyi County and the victims were from two families who lived near to each other.

First to die were Wang Chengxian, 55, his wife and their seven-year-old granddaughter, police said.

Members of the Li family - Li Xiaozhong, 46, his wife, mother-in-law and stepdaughter, who was pregnant with twins - heard loud noises from the Wangs' house and went to investigate, according to local media reports. They, too, were attacked and killed.

The bodies were discovered on Sunday night after Zheng walked into a police office to give himself up at around 9pm, police said.

Zheng confessed to police that he used a 20-centimeter knife to kill his friend's parents, daughter, aunt, uncle, niece and another relative in Xuyi County on Saturday night, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Public Security said.

Zheng told police he had planned to stab his friend, surnamed Wang, in revenge for an alleged affair Wang had with his wife, but Wang wasn't home that night.

Zheng and Wang had been friends, and they had committed robberies together, which led to Zheng serving a one-year jail sentence in 2009. After his release, he learned of the alleged affair.

A Nanjing Morning Post reporter who visited the scene after the bodies were discovered described the killings as "extremely merciless."

Other neighbors, all of whom were senior citizens, were unaware of anything suspicious on Saturday night. Fellow villagers believed Zheng had been looking for his wife and "lost his mind" when he couldn't find her.




 

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