Murdered Chinese boy, 15, found bound and mutilated
Man arrested after child with learning difficulties found dead and tied to pole in village in Shaanxi province
A man has been arrested for the murder of a 15-year-old boy with learning difficulties whose mutilated body was found tied to a pole in a village in northern China.
A 39-year-old man has admitted killing the boy on Tuesday night, according to a statement published on Thursday midnight by police in Zhouzhi county in Shaanxi province.
The body was found outside a house in Zhendong village.
The boy’s hands were tied to a vertical pole, his trousers partially pulled down and his body mutilated, the news website Thepaper.cn reported.
An annual village temple festival was held this week about 50 metres from the scene of the crime.
The festival had attracted the boy, who was only identified by his surname Ren, who lived in a village about 4km away.
Ren travelled alone to the neighbouring village on Tuesday morning, but did not return home that evening.
She saw the boy’s body, surrounded by onlookers, as the police had yet to arrive, according to the article.
“I screamed for them to help take down the body … my child had lost so much blood and that was why he died,” she said.
The grandmother said the boy had stopped attending school two years previously and she and his father raised the child as his parents were divorced.
“He was a good boy at home. He would go out every day after breakfast and stay outside the whole day, but would always return at around nine to 10 o’clock,” the child’s father said.
The suspect accused of the killing, whose full name was not given, lives in the village where the boy’s body was found.
The man, who is said to have mental health issues, was arrested 15 hours after the body was discovered, the article said.
