Stabbing spree latest in string of random attacks
Print Edition
A DISGRUNTLED man went on a stabbing spree in the southwestern city of Chengdu, killing four people and wounding 11 others because of a family dispute, police revealed yesterday.
It was the latest in a string of apparently random attacks across the country.
The public security bureau in Chengdu said on its microblog that the 41-year-old began attacking fellow passengers on a bus on Sunday night. He then got off and began attacking pedestrians until he was shot and wounded by police.
Police said the man told them he’d had a financial dispute with family members and had arrived in Chengdu on Sunday from his hometown of Jintang.
A camera on the bus recorded the suspect suddenly taking out a knife at 9:16pm and starting to stab passengers on the No. 42 bus running through Chengdu’s downtown area, the city’s public security office said.
China Central Television said earlier that a 10-year-old girl had been seriously wounded.
China has seen a number of mass stabbings and other attacks in recent weeks carried out by people bearing grudges against society or suffering from mental illness.
On August 20, Zhou Jiangbo, 24, was apprehended by police after three children were killed and 15 other passengers injured on a bus in Anyang in central China’s Henan Province the day before. The dead were a 10-month-old baby and two boys, aged 10 and 17.
On August 16 in Wuhan City, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, a man with a knife injured five people and committed suicide by jumping off the fifth floor of a shopping-mall.
Some experts blamed the hot weather for the incidents.
However, Liu Banghui, former head of the research institute on criminal psychology under the Beijing-based China University of Politic Science and Law, is cautious about the weather theory.
“It’s true we will consider connections between the crimes and the time, but the motive varies for each case, and that matters more,” she said. “After all, people usually won’t take such extreme action to release their emotions.”
Lin Bingxian, a researcher at the university, believed a psychological crisis triggered by rapid social change was the main reason behind the attacks.
“Nowadays, people feel great pressure over change in the society, like mounting housing prices, for instance,” said Lin.
“Meanwhile, as unbalanced economical development widens the income gap in China, people are prone to be frustrated and feel everything is unfair, which is then easy for them to initiate violence,” he said.
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