China: Fatal School Attack

A school attack has occurred Monday in China that has left three dead and four injured. It ended in the suicide of the attacker, as frequently happens in North America.

But unlike USA school shootings, the event was carried out through the use of a knife. Knives and hatchets are a common method for lethal Asian school invasions of suicidal individuals, as gun control laws preclude firearms being employed.

The attack took place this evening, February 25, 2008, at a Guangzhou school in the Leizhou city of south China's Guangdong Province.

The news agency Xinhua gives these further details, via editor Yan Liang:

A young man named Chen Wenzhen broke into Leizhou No. 2 Middle School at around 7:35 p.m. [on Monday] killed a boy and a girl of Senior Two with his knife and injured four before he stabbed his own abdomen and jumped off the fifth floor, said Zheng Jiu, the school headmaster....The four injured, including three students and a teacher who tried to stop the killing, were being treated in Leizhou People's Hospital, local authorities said....The suspect, described as mentally disturbed, was also a Senior Two student. He left school half a year ago for he often suffered from headache and could not concentrate on his study, according to Zheng.