Witnesses: Weight not used in brawl
Print Edition
IN a new development, 15 witnesses said they had not seen four former urban management officials use a heavy iron weight to hit a watermelon vendor, who reportedly died from the attack.
The witnesses were speaking at an appeal’s court in central China’s Hunan Province on Tuesday.
The witnesses said they did not see Liao Weichang, Luo Weiping, Xia Jiyu and Yuan Cheng use iron weight to hit the vendor, Deng Zhengjia. But they saw them beating and kicking Deng till he collapsed, the Chengzhou City Intermediate Peoples’s Court heard.
The court was also told that several experts had said Deng’s injuries were caused by some big and blunt object and not by iron weight.
On December 27, 2013, the Yongxing County People’s Court found the four guilty of causing intentional harm and sentenced them to 11, six, four and three and a half years in jail respectively.
The four men denied they intentionally caused harm to Deng. Instead, they said Deng carried the weight to attack Liao.
Deng’s wife Huang Xixi threw watermelons at Liao, according to a posting on www.chinacourt.org.
“I saw Deng trying to attack Liao and I tried to intervene. I did not mean to hurt any one. All I did was to protect myself because Deng had punched me in the neck and beat me in the chest,” Yuan said.
Liao insisted that Deng collapsed on his own. “Onlookers said he was battling incontinence and I immediately called for an ambulance,” he said.
It was not known if the iron weight had been identified in the earlier trial. But the appeals court was told they cannot be convicted for causing intentional injury.
Deng, then 56, died on July 17 2013.
The couple had been selling watermelons at a riverside scenic spot when the tragic incident occurred. That morning, they had met urban management officials twice, Huang said.
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