School attacker sentenced to death
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A former community doctor was sentenced to death Thursday for murdering eight children outside their primary school last month in east China.
Zheng Minsheng, 41, admitted "intentionally killing" the children on March 23 at the gate of the Nanping Experimental Elementary School.
The hearing at the Intermediate People's Court of Nanping City, Fujian Province, began at 8 a.m. and lasted about four hours.
Prosecutors of the Nanping People's Procuratorate played 15 video clips, totaling 55 seconds of footage, showing Zheng stabbing children with a knife as they arrived at the school
Other evidence, including the knife, bloodstained clothes and schoolbags of the victims, were presented to the court.
Parents, holding pictures of the teenage victims, couldn't help crying while the prosecutors read the names of their children.
Zheng told the court, "I'm willing to shoulder responsibility for what I've done."
Zheng, appearing agitated, repeatedly told the court he had been turned down by a woman and suffered unfair treatment from the woman's wealthy family, which prompted him to carry out the attack.
He shouted "I want to appeal against the verdict" as soon as the court announced the death penalty, insisting that the woman and her family should share part of the responsibility.
Prosecutors said Zheng, who is not married, had been unsuccessful in relations with women, his family and in his career, so he felt life was meaningless.
More than 50 reporters from dozens of media organizations were present at the hearing.
Police said after arresting Zheng that their investigations showed Zheng carried out the attack because he felt frustrated after breaking up with his girlfriend and he found life meaningless.
Zheng had no history of mental illness, according to police.
A woman surnamed Wang, who lived adjacent to the clinic where Zheng had served, told Xinhua that Zheng was kind to patients and responsible at work. But feeling bad about his work relationships and failing to get help from his boss, Zheng quit his job last year and could not find a new one.
Having to take care of his 80-year-old mother and remaining single, Zheng always complained about his unsuccessful life, said Wang, who ran a tailor's shop.
Zheng was an introvert of few words and always had the suspicion that people looked down upon him, said Chen Yuanhe, one of his neighbors in Tiantai Community.
Zheng lived with his mother and the family of his brother in a 60-sq-meter flat, and had to sleep in the balcony in summer and in the living room in winter.
While Chinese were shocked and indignant about the man who chose schoolchildren to attack, experts said it was an extreme case revealing the heavy social burden many Chinese were bearing.
Not having a job, a house or a wife was quite humiliating and Zheng had been suffering from the feeling of failure for a long time, said Zhang Changrong, a professor in psychology with the Police College of Fujian.
As his anxiety and annoyance kept building up, Zheng finally tried to break out of his torture and revenge society in a most extreme way, said the psychologist.
Less communication and increasing social competition should be blamed for people's spiritual sufferings that leads to suicide or, even worse, killing others, said Gan Mantang, a professor of sociology with Fuzhou University.
Zheng, used to be a kind doctor, sank to the bottom of the social stratum after he became jobless and he couldn't find any reason to be happy in his life. He only blamed society for his plight, rather than examining himself, said Gan.
A mechanism should be established by society to continually encourage people to improve themselves through hardwork. Social welfare measures and psychological consultation services should be available for those people in need, he said.
The government must be more cognizant of the role psychological assistance plays in stopping people from doing dangerous things that threaten others' safety, Gan said.
Aside from killing the eight children, Zheng injured five other children in the knife attack.
Four of them have been moved out of intensive care to receive rehabilitation, while the worst injured, Zhang Xuexin, was still in the intensive care for observation, according to doctors with the No.1 Hospital of Nanping where the children were treated.
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