Hunan principal dies protecting pupil in latest school knife attack
A 58-year-old primary school principal in Hunan was stabbed to death on Monday as he fended off a man who was attacking a pupil, local media reported.
China News Service said an unidentified man and woman broke into the Meizhen Beidu Primary School in Xinhua county just before 2pm on Monday.
The man attacked Wang Zhenyu , a third-year pupil. School principal Yang Jianyi tried to stop the attack and was stabbed to death. Wang was badly wounded and is in intensive care in Loudi .
The incident came just days after officials from the Communist Party's Central Comprehensive Social Management Commission urged schools to hire at least one full-time security guard.
A series of knife attacks on mainland schoolchildren in 2010 shocked the nation and restrictions have been introduced on people buying large knives, but school security remains a concern in poor and rural areas due to limited resources.
reported yesterday that two suspects had been detained over Monday's attack and where being subjected to psychological tests by police.
It cited a witness as saying that a man and a woman walked into the school and attacked the boy during a physical education class.
"The PE teacher then called for the principal, who arrived at the scene and tried to fight off one attacker," he said. "But he was stabbed to death at the scene."
Photographs of the crime scene posted on online news portals showed bloodstains on a concrete pavement and on vegetables in a school garden.
A middle-aged man stormed into a primary school in Henan last month and injured 23 students with a kitchen knife.
