China executed a man on Monday for killing 35 people in a car rampage in the southern city of Zhuhai in November 2024, the country’s bloodiest mass attack in years.
On November 11, Fan Weiqiu, 62, intentionally drove a tiny SUV through crowds of people exercising outside a sports complex, injuring 45 people in China’s deadliest such incident since 2014.
He was condemned to death last month, with a court ruling that his motivations “were extremely vile, (and) the nature of the crime extremely egregious.”
CCTV reported Monday that a Zhuhai court “executed Fan Weiqiu in accordance with the execution order issued by the Supreme People’s Court.”
The municipal public prosecutor “sent personnel to supervise (the execution) in accordance with the law,” according to CCTV.
Fan’s attack generated enormous public outrage and introspection in China about the state of society. He was seized at the site with self-inflicted knife wounds and later entered a coma, according to authorities.
At his trial last month, Fan pleaded guilty in front of some of the victims’ families, officials and members of the public.
The court found he “decided to vent his anger” over “a broken marriage, personal frustrations, and dissatisfaction with the division of property after divorce.”
It ruled that his methods were “particularly cruel, and the consequences particularly severe, posing significant harm to society.”.
In a similar ruling, CCTV reported Monday that a separate court in eastern Jiangsu province had carried out the death penalty on a man who killed eight people and wounded 17 in a mass stabbing in November.
Xu Jiajin, a 21-year-old former student who attacked a vocational school in the city of Wuxi, was executed “in accordance with the law,” CCTV reported.
He too had been sentenced to death in December, with the court concluding that his crime was “extraordinarily serious,” CCTV stated.
According to the broadcaster, Xu was given the opportunity to “meet with his close relatives” before being executed.
China classifies death penalty figures as a state secret, but rights groups such as Amnesty International think many are executed each year.
