A Chinese court has sentenced a man to death over his attack on a bus used by a Japanese school in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou in June, which caused the death of a Chinese bus attendant who tried to stop him.
Zhou Jiasheng, 52, had traveled to Suzhou, Jiangsu province, from the neighboring Anhui province to commit the crime. In sentencing the unemployed man, the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court said the man had been overwhelmed by debt and so had become despondent about living, which led him to commit the crime that resulted in the death of the bus attendant, Hu Youping. A Japanese woman and her child were also injured in the attack.
The court deemed the crime as “extremely heinous” and carrying “significant social repercussions,” and concluded that the death penalty was appropriate, according to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo.