Man stabbed 28 kids to take ‘revenge on society’

BEIJING - A 46-year-old unemployed man who stabbed 28 children at a kindergarten school in China’a Jiangsu province has said the attack was his “revenge on society”, police said Friday.

Xu Yuyuan, detained after the horrific knife attack Thursday at a kindergarten in Taixing city, said he was angry over a series of business and personal humiliations.

Xinhua quoted police officer Jiang Wenxiang as saying that two teachers and a security were also wounded in the attack.

Police found that Xu owned eight apartments in the city and was reasonably well off. “He is married and has a grown-up child,” said Sun Yun, vice mayor of Taixing.

He had leased four of his apartments and opened two stores - one which offered photocopying services and another which sold lamb kebabs - in two of his apartments, police said.

But he had plenty of other problems.

Xu worked at an insurance company until he was fired in 2001. Since then, he had not worked at a fixed job for long.

He was also fired by a security firm over a brawl in 2006. He was detained for making a hoax emergency call to police in 1999.

He was recently cheated by a partner, with whom he had opened a commodity shop. He lost more than 200,000 yuan in the venture. Xu was also slapped by one of his subordinates.