Man in China sentenced to death for fatal stabbing of Japanese boy, Kyodo says

TOKYO/BEIJING - A Chinese court has sentenced a man to death over the fatal stabbing of a Japanese boy in the southern city of Shenzhen, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said on Jan 24, citing Japanese Ambassador to China Kenji Kanasugi.

The trial started earlier in the day.

The boy, a 10-year-old Japanese national born to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother, was

stabbed on his way to school

one morning in September 2024. He died the following day.

The assailant, identified by the Chinese authorities as a 44-year-old man surnamed Zhong, was formally arrested on Nov 30 on suspicion of murder, Kyodo had reported.

The attack took place on the anniversary of an incident in 1931 that triggered war between China and Japan, a sensitive date at a time when diplomatic relations are in danger of deteriorating.

Kyodo said on Jan 24 that the Chinese authorities described the case as an accidental and isolated incident, without giving motives.

It was the second such incident near Japanese educational centres in China in 2024, after

another in June

in which a man attacked a bus used by a Japanese school in the eastern city of Suzhou, resulting in the death of a Chinese national who tried to shield a Japanese mother and her child from the assailant.

A court in Suzhou sentenced that assailant to death on Jan 23, Kyodo reported. REUTERS