The next day, police in a village in Hebei Province, northern China, made a shocking discovery. They found the boy's body buried under a tarp in an abandoned agricultural house.
Then later, his three teenage colleagues were arrested on suspicion of killing the boy in a case that preoccupied the Chinese people, sparking anger and heated debate about the young age of the suspects and issues of bullying and social responsibility in the Chinese countryside.
Details of the crime
Police in the Fexiang District of Handan City identified the boy only by his last name, Wang. They said in a statement on Sunday that the boy was killed on March 10 and that the suspects were arrested the next day.
A police investigator told state broadcaster CCTV on Monday that the crime was premeditated, with the suspects digging the hole twice, once the day before and again on the day of the crime.
Wang's relatives and their lawyers said in interviews with Chinese media and in posts on social media that the boy had been a victim of bullying for a long time, and that one of his colleagues forcibly took a sum of money from him before he was killed.
They said police identified the suspected killers after reviewing surveillance footage and questioning classmates.
A mutilated corpse
“He was beaten alive and his body was mutilated beyond recognition,” Wang's father wrote on the Chinese social media platform Douyin. “I hope that the government will be fair, open and just, and will punish them severely, and that the killers will pay with their lives.”
The case will serve as a test for a change in the law in 2021, which lowered the age at which children could be accused of committing a crime from 14 to 12, as the victim and suspects were all under 14 years old.
Media reports said they were “abandoned” children, a phrase used to describe children in the countryside who are often cared for by grandparents because their parents work in distant cities.
Desire for revenge
As details of the tragedy emerged last weekend, there was renewed concern about the social and psychological well-being of these children, their exposure to violent content online, and the ability of the country's social services to care for them, as posts and videos from Wang's relatives garnered millions of views and thousands of comments.
The victim's family has indicated that they intend to pursue criminal charges.
In a video clip posted by Wang's father on Monday, he said that seeing his son's body was “harder than I could have imagined.”
Wang's father wrote to his son: “Your father is not afraid, he is just upset and angry… Wait for your father to avenge you.”
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