Man Sentenced to Death Over Suzhou Foreign Mother-Child Attack

Source: OT-Team(G)，KYODO NEWS; 凤凰卫视

  A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced a man to death over a knife attack near Shanghai last June that injured a Japanese mother and her child and killed a Chinese bus attendant trying to stop him.

  The Suzhou Intermediate People's Court said the Chinese jobless man named Zhou Jiasheng, 52, convicted of stabbing the three at a Japanese school bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, on June 24, was "debt-ridden" and did not want to continue living, a government official told reporters.

  The crime was "extremely heinous and made a huge social impact, therefore it deserves the death penalty," the court was quoted by the official as saying.

  The bus attendant, Hu Youping, 54, died of stab wounds days after trying to stop the attack.

  The defendant, reportedly in his 50s, had moved to Suzhou from another city before the murder and had no job or family.

  It held the first hearing of the case on Jan. 9.

  The Japanese woman in her 30s had been waiting with her son of preschool age for her older child to return from school before the knife attack.