Chinese dad subjects daughter to vicious assault for taking her brother to the store
Father, 37, went into a violent rage after youngster took her younger sibling to the shop to buy him some snacks
A 37-year-old Chinese man has been arrested for a savage attack on his young daughter in a supermarket, local media reported.
The incident, which was captured by a surveillance camera in the store in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, shows the father approaching the child, who immediately drops to the floor in apparent anticipation of what is to come. The man then slaps her several times as she tries to protect herself.
Seemingly dissatisfied with the punishment he has so far doled out, the father lifts the child off the floor by her left ankle and violently smashes her first into what looks like a display of large plastic bins, and then into a row of chiller cabinets.
As the youngster cowers on the floor, the man takes a broom from a display and repeatedly beats her with it. The ordeal ends only when a crowd of other shoppers notice the incident and run to intervene.
Finally free of her father’s clutches, the little girl hobbles away, clearly in a lot of pain, towards her younger brother. The boy can be seen throughout the footage in the foreground of the shot unable to do anything but watch in horror.
According to news website Chinaxiaokang.com, the incident happened about 9pm at a supermarket in Shuyang county, a suburb of the city of Suqian. It did not say who released the 70-second video, but it was later widely circulated on social media.
A member of the public contacted the police who arrived on the scene and detained the father, who was identified only by his surname Wei, the report said.
In a statement released on Thursday night on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Shuyang police quoted Wei as saying that he had punished the child for taking her brother to the store without telling him.
He said he was a single parent and had had custody of the children since divorcing their mother.
The report said that the little girl had wanted to treat her brother to 10 yuan (US$1.50) worth of snacks.
The police statement said that Wei had been arrested and would face a 14-day detention. It did not clarify if that would be the extent of his punishment or if he might face further charges.
The video, not surprisingly, sparked lots of comments online.
A person on Reddit wrote: “The girl isn’t crying, nor is the boy, which probably means this is a regular occurrence.”
Another wrote on Weibo that it was “scary that there are no exams on being a parent”.
