Chinese man sentenced to death for attacking 29 kids

BEIJING - A 46-year-old unemployed man who had stabbed 29 children at a kindergarten in China’s Jiangsu province, as part of his “revenge on society”, was sentenced to death by a local court Saturday.

Xu Yuyuan had also stabbed two teachers and a security guard at the Zhongxin Kindergarten in Jiangsu’s Taixing city April 29. The Taixing Intermediate Court Saturday found Xu guilty of intentional homicide after a half-day open trial, which was attended by over 300 people, Xinhua reported.

Xu told the court his motive was to vent his rage against society. He said he was angry over a series of business and personal humiliations.

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

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

But he had plenty of problems in his life, police said.

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, and had been detained in 1999 for making a hoax emergency call to police.

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.