Three dead, three others injured in rare shooting in southern China
Villager who turned hunting rifle on officials attempting to mediate in property dispute remains at large for 10 hours before being caught by police
A villager in southern China has killed three people and injured three others in a rare shooting on Friday night, local media report.
After the shooting, believed to be over a property dispute, the suspect Zhang Zhiming, 44, wrote a testament to his creditors saying he would “honour my debts in the afterlife” and then ran away.
He was captured on Saturday morning, local police announced by social media.
Friday’s shooting took place in Dongyuan county, Guangdong province, the official Guangzhou Daily newspaper reported, citing other villagers.
Zhang had quarrelled with village officials over a land issue, then returned with a hunting gun to attack them, the paper said.
The official police statement did not delve into the specific reasons for the shooting but said it was over a “housing renovation”.
According to the local government’s account, Zhang had quarrelled with other villagers over his house project and refused to accept mediation by village officials.
Land disputes are a common grievance in China, especially in rural areas, and about 60 per cent of “mass petitions”, or protests, are linked to land seizures.
China bans private gun ownership of arms, although illegal possession of low-quality guns and rifles still exists. However, what few shootings occur are usually involve individual crimes and personal vendettas.
In June 2015, a farmer in Suning, Hebei province shot two villagers and two policemen. In another case in 2013, a chemical factory worker in suburb of Shanghai shot and killed six people, including a soldier.
Zhou Kehua, who had been in out of prison since he was a teenager, is believed to have shot dead 11 people in a series of robberies starting in 2004 in Jiangsu, Hunan and Chongqing before he was killed in a shoot-out with police in 2012.
Gun crime is more prevalent in Guangdong. In February last year, gunmen injured 14 villagers in Lufeng county during a land dispute with a local government official in Hudong township, Thepaper.cn reported. The official was accused of occupying a 4,000 square metre plot of forest to build a family cemetery, and allegedly hired the gunmen to attack the villagers who attempt to stop the construction.
