Sweet shop hostage drama ends in death

By Tom Qian  |   2009-6-23  |     ONLINE EDITION

A PASSIONATE and bitter hostage drama came to an end in a Nanjing sweet shop yesterday as a man stabbed his student girlfriend to death and was later shot by police marksmen.

The attacker, surnamed Yu from Shenzhen, met the girl, surnamed Fang for a date at the Yunzhong Food Store at Taipingmen Street, Nanjing, at 5:30pm, the Yangtse Evening Post reported. Nanjing is capital of eastern China's Jiangsu Province.

Within minutes Yu began stabbing his former girlfriend and she fell to the ground in a pool of blood. A schoolfriend who had accompanied Fang knelt beside her, crying and pleading with Yu who sat astride the bleeding girl holding his knife in his hand.

As onlookers and police started crowding into the shop Fang's friend ran away and just before two police marksman arrived on the scene Wu dragged the girl into a small room at the back of the shop and lay under her body. He kept his knife at her throat leaving no target for the sharpshooters

But 20 minutes later he raised his head and he was shot immediately. Police rushed the girl and her attacker to hospital where she died and Yu remains in a critical condition.

Fang and Yu met each other online. Just a few days before Fang skipped her classes and went to Shenzhen to see Yu. Fang's parents and teachers went to Shenzhen in southern Guangdong Province and brought her home. Fang was a grade one student at Nanjing No. 34 Middle School.

The girlfriend who accompanied Fang on her fatal date with Yu said Yu had waited for Fang at the school gate on Saturday and then followed her home.

Three of Fang's teachers were in the crowd of onlookers.