Suspect kindergarten arsonist captured (AP) Updated: 2006-05-09 17:27
A man accused of setting fire to a Chinese kindergarten, killing three
children and wounding others, was captured Tuesday after a daylong manhunt,
police announced.
Three local residents
grieve their children's death in Shiguan village, central China's
Henan province May 8, 2006. Bai Ningyang, a 19-year-old native set fire to
a classroom of a local kindergarten on Monday, killing 3 students and
wounding another 13 students and a teacher.
[Newsphoto]
| Bai Ningyang was caught late
Tuesday afternoon, Qu Xiaosheng, a police spokesman in Gongyi, a city in the
central province of Henan, told The Associated Press. Qu wouldn't give any other
details.
Bai, 19, is accused of igniting two cans of gasoline on Monday morning in a
kindergarten in Gongyi. Local authorities said 13 people were wounded in
addition to the three children killed.
The government hasn't announced a possible motive or said whether Bai has any
connection to the school.
Also Tuesday, schools in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province, held
fire safety drills prompted by the attack, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
China has suffered a string of unrelated attacks on children at schools
throughout the country by assailants using knives, homemade guns and other
weapons.
Most of the attacks were blamed on personal grudges or people with
psychiatric problems.
Local authorities were ordered in March to post police guards at many schools
to improve security.
In the most recent major incident, a man wounded 16 children and two adults
at a school in central China when he opened fire on a schoolyard with six
homemade guns.
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