Society

Villager stabs 9 women and children, 2 dead

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-11 07:13

BEIJING - A knife-wielding villager stabbed two women to death and injured seven other women and children in Northwest China's Shaanxi province on Monday.

The suspect, Song Rong, allegedly barged into houses in Songhiapo village in Wubao county of Yulin city and stabbed each person he came across, cnwest.com, an official provincial news portal, reported on Monday evening.

The youngest of Song's victims was only 2 years old, the report said, citing unnamed sources.

At least two women had died by 8 pm on Monday. One elderly woman in her 60s died at the scene and another young woman surnamed Zhang died at a hospital, the report said.

Song is now in police custody.

According to the villagers, Song is an "irascible man who has little personal contact with neighbors and often beat his family members". Song's father allegedly left home to be a migrant worker to avoid his violent son and also persuaded Song's wife and children to leave home, the report said.

The latest killing spree in Shaanxi comes just a day after a man killed eight people, including his mother, wife and daughter, in Jishui county of East China's Jiangxi province.

Zhou Yezhong, 36, allegedly stabbed to death three members of his family, four neighbors and a migrant worker in Jishui's Chengyuan village at about 6 pm on Sunday. Local police said on Monday they are still investigating the motive.

Domestic and foreign experts said the recent killing sprees, together with a series of violent school attacks in the past two months, could possibly be the result of "modern social stress in China".

Joshua Miller, chairman of the Social Welfare Policy and Services Sequence at Smith College of the United States, said over the weekend that the stress brought by rapid social change in China unsettled people, created tension and caused mental illnesses.

"The string of school attacks occur when society causes stress on people, like rapid social change, mass migrations, increasing disparities in wealth and weakening of traditions," Miller said. He also said attacking children is a way for stressed people to call for attention and help.

Han Buxin, a research fellow with the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the attacks reflect stress and social conflicts that cannot be ignored.

Han said people suffering from mental disorders could also attack people, but the suspects in recent cases carefully planned their assaults.

Both experts agreed that monitoring the mentally ill could help reduce such cases, as this social group is inclined to threaten campus security.

Han said psychological therapy could alleviate social stress to some extent, but it would be unfeasible to extend monitoring and treatment across the country.

"Two years ago, about 2 to 3 percent of Chinese suffered from mental disorders. Considering the country's population of 1.3 billion, the total number of mental patients is too big for the government to handle," he said.

China Daily-Xinhua