China on Monday executed a man who killed 35 people in a car crash in the southern city of Zhuhai in November, the country’s deadliest mass attack in years.
On November 11, Fan Weikiu, 62, deliberately drove a small SUV into a crowd of people exercising outside a sports complex, injuring 45 people in China’s worst crime since 2014. Last month he was sentenced to death, after a court cited his intentions. were extremely gruesome, (and) the nature of the crime was extremely serious”.
State broadcaster CCTV said on Monday that a Zhuhai court “executed Fan Weikiu in accordance with the execution order issued by the Supreme People’s Court”.
According to CCTV reports, the municipal public prosecutor “sent personnel to monitor (the execution) in accordance with the law”.
Fan’s attack shocked a large number of people in China and led to introspection about the state of society.
He was detained at the scene after injuring himself with a knife and falling into a coma, police said at the time.
At his trial last month, Fan pleaded guilty in front of some of the victims’ families, authorities and members of the public, state media said.
The court found that he “decided to vent his anger” over his “broken marriage, personal frustrations and dissatisfaction with the division of property after the divorce”.
It concluded that the methods he used “were particularly cruel, and the consequences particularly severe, causing significant harm to society”.
second execution
Violent crime is generally rare in China compared to many Western countries, but the country saw a spate of mass casualty incidents last year. The stabbings and car attacks challenged the ruling Communist Party’s reputation for strict public security and crime prevention.
They also introduced a shock factor that led some to question perceived social ills such as a slow economy, high unemployment and despair over declining social mobility.
A separate court in eastern Jiangsu province has sentenced to death a man who killed eight people and injured 17 in a mass stabbing in November, CCTV reported on Monday.
Xu Jiajin, a 21-year-old former student who attacked a vocational school in Wuxi city, was killed “in accordance with the law”, CCTV reported.
He was also sentenced to death in December, CCTV said, after the court concluded his crime was “exceptionally serious”.
The broadcaster said Xu was allowed to “meet his close relatives” before his execution.
China classifies death penalty statistics as a state secret, but human rights groups including Amnesty believe thousands of people are executed in the country each year.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
