Bulldozer rampage toll now 17
By David Wivell |
August 4, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE death toll after a drunk bulldozer driver tore through a rural community in northern China has risen to 17, local residents said yesterday.
Families of the victims yesterday mourned their loved ones at funerals across Yuanshi County in the northern province of Hebei, two days after 38-year-old Li Xianliang went on his killing spree.
Shattered buildings, crushed cars and splintered trees testified to the severity of the damage inflicted by the massive machine.
Li drove off on Sunday afternoon after killing his boss at the coal depot where he worked after the two men had fought over money while drinking.
Apparently picking his victims at random, Li smashed his way down a tree-lined road, running over motorcycles and small cars and ripping into buses.
In some cases, he stopped to flip the vehicles with his bucket before crushing them under his wheels, residents said, adding that the youngest victim was just 5 years old.
Villagers, some hanging onto the side of the vehicle, attempted to stop the mayhem, one of them stabbing Li several times with a kitchen knife.
Li drove back to the coal depot and, bleeding heavily, brandished a crowbar but was overcome when villager Wang Xinjiang kicked him in the groin and pinned him to the ground.
"He came down and said 'I'm a dead man anyway. I'm dead anyway,'" said Wang, who is a former soldier.
Friends and family gathered to offer condolences at one home where the bodies of a 34-year-old housewife and her young daughter were laid out in coffins.
"We didn't know him. We don't know why he did it. It is just like some natural disaster that came along," said the woman's husband, Liu Binfeng.
Li has been taken into custody and almost certainly faces the death penalty.
A series of rampage attacks across China in recent months have left dozens of people dead and scores wounded. Assailants, most of them wielding knives, targeted kindergartens and elementary schools, a courthouse, and random victims at markets and on a train.
The attacks have prompted calls for more efforts to treat serious mental illnesses.
Families of the victims yesterday mourned their loved ones at funerals across Yuanshi County in the northern province of Hebei, two days after 38-year-old Li Xianliang went on his killing spree.
Shattered buildings, crushed cars and splintered trees testified to the severity of the damage inflicted by the massive machine.
Li drove off on Sunday afternoon after killing his boss at the coal depot where he worked after the two men had fought over money while drinking.
Apparently picking his victims at random, Li smashed his way down a tree-lined road, running over motorcycles and small cars and ripping into buses.
In some cases, he stopped to flip the vehicles with his bucket before crushing them under his wheels, residents said, adding that the youngest victim was just 5 years old.
Villagers, some hanging onto the side of the vehicle, attempted to stop the mayhem, one of them stabbing Li several times with a kitchen knife.
Li drove back to the coal depot and, bleeding heavily, brandished a crowbar but was overcome when villager Wang Xinjiang kicked him in the groin and pinned him to the ground.
"He came down and said 'I'm a dead man anyway. I'm dead anyway,'" said Wang, who is a former soldier.
Friends and family gathered to offer condolences at one home where the bodies of a 34-year-old housewife and her young daughter were laid out in coffins.
"We didn't know him. We don't know why he did it. It is just like some natural disaster that came along," said the woman's husband, Liu Binfeng.
Li has been taken into custody and almost certainly faces the death penalty.
A series of rampage attacks across China in recent months have left dozens of people dead and scores wounded. Assailants, most of them wielding knives, targeted kindergartens and elementary schools, a courthouse, and random victims at markets and on a train.
The attacks have prompted calls for more efforts to treat serious mental illnesses.
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