Thirty-five people were killed, and another 43 wounded, on Monday night when a man drove his sport utility vehicle (SUV) into a crowd of people exercising outside a stadium in China’s southern city of Zhuhai.
Zhuhai police said the attacker, identified as a 62-year-old man with the surname “Fan,” attempted to flee the scene but police blocked him.
Fan was taken to a local hospital with severe neck injuries after trying to kill himself with a knife while still inside his vehicle. He is reportedly in a coma, so he is “unable to be questioned by police.”
“Authorities said a preliminary investigation indicated that Fan was motivated by dissatisfaction with the division of property in his divorce case,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
Chinese censors worked through the night to scrub videos posted to social media by eyewitnesses to the attack. NBC News noted that the Zhuhai attack was only the 11th highest-ranking topic on Weibo, China’s heavily-policed version of Twitter, which suggests a large number of posts discussing the incident were swiftly deleted.
“I’m utterly speechless aside from being shocked. I need a moment of silence to calm myself down,” said one surviving Weibo post.
One eyewitness said the victims consisted of six groups – including elderly people, women, and children – who used designated walking paths to take regularly-scheduled walks for exercise.
An infographic shows where a car ploughed into a crowd of people outside a stadium in the city of Zhuhai in Guangdong province, southern China. (Photo by Murat Usubali/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The witness, surnamed Chen, said his group had just finished its third lap of the stadium when a car flew toward them at high speed, “knocking down many people.”
“It drove in a loop, and people were hurt in all areas of the running track – east, south, west, and north,” another witness told Chinese media, as translated by the BBC.
Zhuhai, located in the Guangdong province of southern China, is also currently the scene of a major air show where the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has unveiled several new aircraft, including its J-35A stealth fighter. Former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, now chief of the Russian Security Council, is among the VIP guests at the event.
The air show is being held at a venue about 24 miles away from the stadium where the vehicle attack occurred. The BBC said it was “unclear” whether the attack had any connection to the air show. Chinese officials are certainly striving to give the impression there was no connection.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping made a rare statement about the case on Monday night, urging local authorities to “do their best to treat the wounded” and comfort their families.
“The murderer should be severely punished according to the law,” he said.
Xi also urged local officials to “draw lessons” from the incident, “strengthen risk prevention and control,” and improve their ability to “resolve conflicts and disputes in a timely manner,” seemingly an illusion to the police statement about the killer being angry over his divorce.
Xi reportedly ordered a “working group” from Beijing to travel to Zhuhai to assist with the investigation.
China has been suffering through a rash of attacks on civilians and foreigners, some perpetrated with vehicles while other attackers used knives. The most recent attack before the Zhuhai incident was a knife rampage at a Walmart store in Shanghai in early October.
The Shanghai attacker, a 37-year-old man named “Lin,” reportedly killed three people and injured 15 more to “vent his anger due to a personal economic dispute.” The attack coincided with China’s National Day holiday, although Chinese officials treated the timing as a coincidence. Few additional details have been released since the attack.
Chinese officials said they were ordered to step up their efforts to “sift out all these so-called losers and put them under watch” after the Shanghai attack. These officials grumbled they were given only vague guidance for identifying potentially violent individuals, and there were far too many people in serious economic distress to keep them all under surveillance.
