The drama, “tragic and brutal”took place on the evening of Monday, November 11, from 7:48 p.m., within a sports center in Zhuhai, in southeast China, reports the newspaper Diyi Caijing. A man driving a light all-terrain vehicle “hit several citizens who were exercising, causing the death of 35 people after rescue efforts failed”. Forty-three other individuals were injured and are hospitalized.
According to the daily Pengpai Xinwen, he is a journalist from Xiaoxiang Chenbaoa local newspaper, which revealed the information around 9 p.m., after learning from a member of the emergency department at a hospital in Zhuhai that more than twenty people had been admitted suddenly. His article, originally published on the platform Weixinhas since been deleted.
Official information, like Diyi Caijingdescribe the sudden irruption of the vehicle which forced the door of the circular enclosure to “rush into the pile, going around several times”.
A poorly accepted divorce
The driver, identified only by his last name, Fan, was eventually stopped in his tracks by the police, “after he inflicted serious injuries on his neck and other parts of his body”. He is currently in a coma.
According to the first elements of the investigation, Fan had recently refused the financial conditions surrounding his divorce, and requested a new decision from the civil court. “After a thorough on-site investigation, analysis of video surveillance, witness testimonies and electronic evidence, precise Diyi Caijing, the public security agency preliminarily concluded that the case was triggered by Fan’s dissatisfaction with the result of property division after divorce.”
In Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping described this tragedy as“extremely brutal”urging local authorities to do everything possible to save the injured and “severely punish the criminal”, reports the official press agency Xinhua.
“Xi Jinping also urged local governments to strengthen risk prevention and control and quickly resolve conflicts and disputes.”
At odds with society
And for good reason: China has, in recent months, been the scene of similar attacks attributable to “lone wolves” at odds with an increasingly competitive society, in the context of a sluggish economy. On September 30, a few hours before the Chinese National Day, a man with two knives attacked a crowd in a Shanghai shopping center, killing three people.
In June, another knife attack, in Suzhou, in the east of the country, targeted a Japanese mother and her child, as well as a Chinese woman who got in the way of the maniac. The latter died. Moreover, following the car-ramming attack in Zhuhai, the Japanese embassy in Beijing asked its nationals in China on Tuesday, November 12, to avoid speaking Japanese out loud.
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