A man drove an SUV into a crowd of students and pedestrians outside a school in the Chinese city of Changde on Tuesday, injuring numerous people, but no fatalities were reported.
Chinese authorities have released few details about the incident, but if the collision was intentional, it would be China's third mass casualty vehicle attack in the past seven days.
Changde City is a city with a population of approximately 5 million people located in Hunan Province in southern China. incident reportedly In the incident, an unnamed 39-year-old man crashed into the gates of Yongyasu Elementary School in a small white SUV around 8 a.m., just as students were arriving for class.
local media reported The driver of the car was dragged from the car and beaten by a mob of angry parents and school security guards. Video of the incident showed an enraged pedestrian hitting the SUV's windshield with a stick and snow shovel.
Police said the driver, identified only by his surname “Hun,” is currently in custody and under investigation. No clear statement has been made as to whether this incident was an incident or not. intentional attack Or an accident. There have been car attacks in China before, resulting in terrible death tolls, but as of Tuesday afternoon, no deaths had been reported in this case, and only a few serious injuries required hospitalization. It was.
One parent said, “More than a dozen people were hit, some of them in serious condition, but fortunately an ambulance came quickly.'' said BBC on Tuesday.
“Six or seven parents forced the car of the person who hit the other person to stop. The security guard was also knocked down. The security guard was very old, in his 70s or 80s, and couldn't do anything.” said the witness.
As with other recent car attacks, Chinese social media quickly filled with photos and videos of injured people sprawled on the ground, scaring students fleeing for safety.
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China will soon censor deleted As social media posted about the horrific car massacre that took place in Zhuhai last week and even destroyed the physical memorials erected to the victims, they will likely take similar action to silence discussion of the Changde incident. .
Chinese social media is abuzz with talk of the growing threat of individuals “taking revenge on society” by launching deadly attacks with vehicles and knives on random bystanders. For example, a mass murderer in Zhuhai was reportedly angry about the division of assets upon divorce.
The BBC cited Chinese police records saying 19 “incidents of indiscriminate violence” have been recorded so far this year, leaving 63 people dead and 166 injured. A similar incident last year left just 16 people dead and 40 injured.
“Why do hit-and-run incidents like this happen so often these days and always involve students? What is happening to society right now?” one distressed user wrote on Tuesday. he asked on Weibo, an X-style microblogging site.
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“These are symptoms of a society with a lot of grievances. Some people want to give up. Some people, if they're angry, want revenge,” says Lynette Ong of the University of Toronto. observed After last week's Zhuhai attack.
“Although these incidents are sporadic in nature, their increasing frequency suggests that more people in China are suffering hardship and despair unlike anything they have experienced before,” Pitzer College Professor Hanjiang Liu of , agrees.
Qu Weigang, a professor at Fudan University, said part of the problem is that China lacks healthy outlets for people to express their anger and frustration. Everyone fears state retaliation and suppresses their emotions until they explode.
“While it is important to establish social safety nets and psychological counseling mechanisms, the most effective way to minimize such incidents is to create public channels through which the exercise of power can be monitored and exposed. It’s about opening.” Posted On Weibo over the weekend. His essay was deleted by censors within hours.
