Photo: VCG

The attacker who stabbed seven people to death and injured another seven in Kaiyuan, Northeast China's Liaoning Province is uncommunicative and paranoid, whose son had passed away and whose wife had left him, which drove him to take extreme actions to vent his dissatisfaction with society, according to police. 

The accused, surnamed Yang, 62, walked out of his home with a knife and allegedly stabbed passers-by at random as he walked from a grocery store to a sauna along a street in Kaiyuan city on Sunday morning. He killed seven people and injured six others, and a police officer sustained an injury to his right hand as he attempted to catch the suspect, according to a police statement published on the Sina Weibo account of a local media outlet Tieling Online.

The seven injured victims are receiving medical treatment in hospital.

The report said that his son had passed away and his wife divorced him, and his dissatisfaction led him to take extreme actions to commit crimes. 

The report did not mention whether the man was mentally ill.

Police arrived quickly on scene after they received reports of the incident on Sunday morning. Yang was arrested in front of the sauna. After the police fired a warning shot, Yang threw the knife at police and he was captured immediately. 

According to the Sichuan-based Hongxing News, Yang was sentenced to six months and one year on probation previously in a separate case for the crime of intentional injury for hitting someone in 2018. 

Yang was then identified as a patient with "depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms, limited criminal liability when committing crime and mental dissociation," according to a screenshot of the alleged verdict reported by Hongxing News.

Global Times