A mainland-born honours student who killed two men from Hong Kong and wounded five other people in a shooting rampage at an Australian university was found not guilty of murder yesterday on the grounds of mental impairment.
But the Victorian Supreme Court ordered that Xiang Huan Yun, 38, be detained in a secure psychiatric institution for up to 25 years.
The trial was told that at the time of the October 21, 2002, shooting at Melbourne's Monash University, Xiang, a fourth-year commerce student, was suffering psychotic delusions.
During the attack, in which he fired indiscriminately into a classroom, he killed fellow students William Wu Xu-hui, and Steven Chang, both 26, and badly wounded five others.
The court heard that Xiang believed his fellow students wanted to kill him, and that it was his destiny to kill his classmate, Wu, whom he referred to as 'WW'.
A note found in Xiang's home after the shootings read: 'Just pick up a gun, kill all those WWs until there is no more WW in the world any more. To kill WWs is the responsibility defined in my destiny.'