A 47-year-old Liu Xiaohui has been detained by police in southern China on suspicion of carrying out an attack at a kindergarten in Jiangxi province that resulted in the deaths of three persons and injured six others.
According to a statement released by the Anfu county police, Liu Xiaohui was taken into custody around 10:50 p.m. on Wednesday, approximately 12 hours after the incident that took place in the morning. According to the statement, he had run away and was hiding.
The victims’ identities and ages were not released by the police.
According to China’s Global Times newspaper, the attacker is thought to have been equipped with a knife and that at least one victim was a youngster.
Schools in China have increased their security following a string of violent attacks in recent years, many of which were perpetrated by individuals harboring resentment toward society or suffering from mental diseases.
China prohibits the private ownership of firearms, hence the majority of these attacks are carried out using knives, homemade explosives, or gasoline bombs.
In the past decade, hundreds of children and adults have been killed and hundreds more have been injured in disorganized “lone wolf” attacks with uncertain motivations. The predominantly male attackers were either killed, committed suicide, or placed on trial and executed.
Acts of violence against China’s youth reverberate especially loudly due to the country’s chronically low birth rate, in part as a result of population control tactics implemented over decades.
