Jan. 20 (UPI) — China on Monday executed two men convicted of separate deadly attacks carried out in November amid a series of violent crimes committed in the Asian nation.
Fan Weiqiu, 62, was executed by the Intermediate People’s Court of Zhuhai City, in the coastal southern Guangdong Province, for killing 35 people and injuring dozens more on Nov. 11 when he drove his vehicle into a crowd of people exercising at a sports center.
Meanwhile, Xu Jiajin, 21, was executed by the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuxi City, in southeastern Jiangsu Province, for killing eight people and wounding 17 others on Nov. 17 in a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern Jiangsu Province.
The executions were separately announced in statements from the individual local courts, which each said they were carrying out execution orders issued by China’s highest Supreme People’s Court.
Fan was arrested at the scene of his attack. Authorities said he was comatose after stabbing himself in the neck, seemingly in an attempt to die by suicide.
Preliminary investigations found that Fan drove a small off-road vehicle into the crowd because he was angry over the division of assets during his divorce.
The Zhuhai City court said Fan was convicted and sentenced to death Dec. 27 for the crime of endangering public security by dangerous means.
“After the verdict was announced, Fan Weiqiu accepted the sentence,” it said.
Xu was also arrested at the scene of his crime, which was a college in Yixing, where police said he went on a stabbing rampage after failing an exam that prevented him from graduating.
He was sentenced to death Dec. 17. The Supreme People’s Court approved the death penalty, determining that Xu’s crime was “particularly egregious,” with “exceptionally severe consequences” and was an “extremely serious crime.”
According to the Wuxi local court, Xu met his close relatives before his sentence was carried out.
The crimes occurred as China saw a spate of violent attacks.
In October, a 50-year-old man was arrested for stabbing five people, including three children, at a Beijing elementary school.
In late September, three people were killed and another 15 injured in a stabbing spree at a Shanghai supermarket. Authorities said he was “venting frustration” over “personal financial disputes.”
And earlier that month, 11 people were killed and 13 injured when a bus drove into a group of students.
The attacks prompted Beijing officials in late November to call for so-called common disputes among the public to come under greater scrutiny, with focus on private matters that could devolve into violent rampages.
China is believed to execute thousands of people a year, more than any other nation, according to Amnesty International.
