Prison for drunk officer who threw baby to ground
Print Edition
A policeman who threw a baby to the ground after a drinking session was sentenced to a three-year prison term by a court in central China’s Henan Province yesterday.
The baby girl suffered minor head injuries and has since recovered.
Guo Zengxi, of Linzhou City’s public security bureau, pled guilty to a charge of intentional injury and said he wouldn’t appeal the sentence handed down by the Wenfeng District court in Henan’s Anyang City.
The court’s decision was criticized in online comments with many people saying that since Guo was a policeman he deserved harsher punishment.
Several comments mentioned the case of Han Lei, who was sentenced to death late last year for throwing a toddler to the ground in Beijing during an argument. The girl later died.
Prosecutors said that on the evening of July 18 last year, Guo snatched the seven-month-old baby from her parents and threw her to the ground outside a karaoke club in Linzhou after he had been drinking with friends at a local restaurant.
Guo was detained on August 17, 2013, and stood trial last Tuesday.
Guo admitted he had drunk too much and said he thought he was throwing a doll.
Guo said he had blacked out and came to in hospital. He couldn’t initially recall the incident until he saw video clips captured by surveillance cameras, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.
The girl’s father, Li Qingfeng, said the family had received 180,000 yuan (US$29,745) compensation from Guo and another 40,000 yuan from the public security bureau, the Legal Evening News reported.
Li said the family had forgiven Guo because he had expressed his regrets. Also, the girl had recovered well.
The case came to public attention because local authorities had at first punished Guo with a 15-day confinement rather than bringing charges.
Guo wasn’t placed in police custody until the Legal Evening News reported the story.
Six days after Guo was detained, Linzhou’s police chief Wei Shuping, political commissar Yang Chengdong and deputy Party chief Su Xiangshun were sacked from their posts for their handling of the case.
In the Beijing incident, Han was said to have been drunk when he lifted a 2-year-old girl from her pram and threw her to the ground during an argument with her mother over a parking space on July 23 last year. The girl was seriously injured and died days later in hospital.
Han fled the scene but was arrested the next day.
He was charged with murder and sentenced to death by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court on September 25.
On November 29, the Beijing Higher People’s Court rejected his appeal against the ruling.
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