Society

Kindergarten attack revenge for personal problems

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-30 14:52

TAIXING - A man who was detained after a knife attack on children at an east China kindergarten Thursday has told police he carried out the attack in anger at a series of business and personal humiliations, police said Friday.

Jiang Wenxiang, chief of the Public Security Bureau in Taixing City, Jiangsu Province, said Xu Yuyuan, 46, told police the attack was "his revenge on society."

Twenty-nine children and three adults were injured in the attack at Zhongxin Kindergarten in Taixing city.

Jiang, who is also vice mayor of Taixing, said two children injured in the attack, were still in intensive care Friday, but their conditions were stable.

The others were all out of danger.

"Most of the children received head and neck injuries," Jiang said.

Chen Xuefang, mother of an injured child, told Xinhua her son was still in intensive care in the Taixing People's Hospital.

"He is only three and a half years old. Doctors said he was cut on the throat. They used more than 30 stitches to sew up his wound," said the tearful mother who had not slept for 24 hours.

An initial police investigation found Xu, who owned eight apartments in a downtown building, was reasonably well off, contrary to reports Thursday that he was jobless.

"Xu can be called a self-employed man. He is married and has a grown-up child," said Sun Yun, vice mayor of Taixing.

Xu had leased four of his apartments and opened a store offering digital copying services and another selling lamb kebab in two of his ground-floor apartments, the police investigation had found.

Sun said Xu had been a salesman in a local insurance company until he was fired in 2001 for falsely claiming 2,800 yuan. Since then, he had not held a job for long, and taken part in some pyramid schemes. He was fired by a security firm for his involvement in a brawl in 2006.

Xu had a detention record for hoax police emergency call in 1999.

The suspect told the police he had been irritated by one of his subordinates in a direct-selling chain, who slapped his face.

"Xu often looks idle and fierce. He had used a knife to threaten his sister and brother-in-law years ago, but his mother refused to let people call the police for help," said Xu's neighbor surnamed Zhang.

He said neighbors heard Xu was recently cheated by a partner, who cooperated with him in opening a commodity shop. He lost more than 200,000 yuan in the venture.