China police acknowledge lapses in probe into missing teen’s death
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Hu Xinyu was a 15-year-old who was reported missing on Oct 14, 2022, and found on Jan 28 in the woods near his school campus.
PHOTO: TONGBINGXUE/TWITTER
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SHANGHAI – Chinese police have acknowledged lapses in their investigation into the death of a high-school student that has captivated the country.
The four rounds of searches that police conducted for Hu Xinyu “were not thorough”, Mr Hu Mansong, the top police official in the eastern province of Jiangxi, said at a news briefing in Shangrao city on Thursday.
“There is still inadequacy in our work,” Mr Hu said. “We will learn from the past to further improve our work.”
Xinyu was a 15-year-old who attended a boarding school in Shangrao, about 500km south-west of Shanghai. He was reported missing on Oct 14, 2022, and his body was found on Jan 28 in the woods near the school campus.
Police said at the briefing that Xinyu committed suicide, with Mr Hu saying that the boy had expressed suicidal thoughts in recordings.
But Xinyu’s family has raised questions about his death.
His mother posted a video online on Jan 5 in which she expressed concern that he may have been killed or injured in school. Bloomberg News has not been able to independently verify the video.
The case has drawn widespread attention on Chinese social media in recent days, with many people raising questions about police competence. Discussions related to the briefing attracted more than 360 million views on China’s Twitter-style Weibo social media platform in less than two hours.
One Internet user posed a question to the government, saying: “When everything from you is being questioned by the people, have you ever thought that something could be wrong?”
The episode echoes news stories in 2022 that gripped the nation. These include one involving a mother of eight children who was found chained in a hut and another where women diners were beaten by men
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