BEIJING: The man who hijacked a bus and crashed it into pedestrians in east China’s Fujian province had killed two others before the incident, state media reported.
The hijacker, a 48-year-old identified only by his surname Qiu, killed a local official and police officer Tuesday before fleeing the scene and taking over a public bus in Longyan city, Fujian TV said Wednesday.
After Qiu killed the cadre who was visiting his home, he went to a local community office where he fatally wounded a police officer using a knife hidden in his clothes, the report said.
Photos taken by Fujian TV showed broken glass and a blood-splattered floor.
Qiu fled the scene and hijacked a bus, which he drove into a crowd.
Eight people were killed and 22 injured in the incident.
Longyan police did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
In a video posted by Duowei news, a Chinese media outlet based in the US, several injured people were shown lying on the street near a crashed bus, its front badly damaged. It also showed police wrestling a person to the ground.
China has suffered a spate of similar incidents this year.
In late November, a car ploughed into a group of children crossing a street in front of an elementary school in the northeastern Liaoning province, killing five people and injuring at least 19.
The driver said he “chose his victims at random” and had reportedly been contemplating suicide due to domestic troubles before the tragedy occurred.
In October, three people were killed when a man fleeing after committing a stabbing drove into a crowd and attacked onlookers in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
The month before, a man ploughed a truck into a crowd in Hunan province and went on a rampage, attacking onlookers with knives and a shovel. Eleven died and 44 were injured. – AFP
