Guangzhou girl, 4, killed, body parts stored in fridge
A four-year-old Guangzhou girl was murdered, dismembered and her body parts stored in a fridge.
Police have arrested a suspect who is thought to have a mental disorder and was once heard talking about the taste of human flesh, mainland media reported yesterday.
Li Lingli, the daughter of a Hunan migrant worker family living in the Panyu district of the city, disappeared on Friday morning while four of her family members were working or otherwise engaged, the Guangzhou Daily reported.
The report said Lingli's grandparents began the search for the missing girl. They had called the police who arrived at noon and searched all 50 rental apartments in the neighbourhood but found nothing.
In the late afternoon, the girl's grandmother spotted fresh blood outside a flat belonging to Ah He, a migrant worker from Sichuan , and she called police again.
The girl's dismembered body was found in a small fridge in Ah He's room, the report said.
Panyu district police refused to reveal details of the case last night. A staff member at the news office of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau said the bureau was still investigating and could not comment on the newspaper's report.
She said the bureau needed more time to investigate and that the report by the state-owned Guangzhou Daily could be quoted.
Neighbours told the newspaper that Ah He, who is in his thirties or forties, had moved to the neighbourhood about two months ago.
A reclusive man, he had never talked to anyone and even the tenant in the flat next to his did not know his name, they said.
Neighbours said that when Ah He used the communal television at the end of a neighbourhood alley, he preferred war films and that he had sometimes talked to himself when the plot made him excited.
'[Ah He] said that human meat was in fact delicious,' a neighbour was quoted as saying, describing him watching a scene in a movie that depicted people killed in battle.
Neighbours said Ah He had a habit of dressing in women's clothes, such as dresses and underwear, and that he had even appeared in public in such clothes. The murder of Lingli was the most shocking case reported in Guangzhou during the New Year holiday.
But a public study showed the city's residents' opinion of public security was fairly positive last year.
Guangzhou police said in a statement released last week they had solved more than 50,000 cases and seized 29,000 suspects last year.
To tighten public order, police installed 28,000 surveillance cameras last year to bring the total number of cameras in the city to 240,000.
The statement said that, according to Guangzhou Public Opinion Research Centre's annual survey, 83 per cent of interviewees were satisfied with the city's public security last year and that 89 per cent said they felt safe in Guangzhou.
