A fruit vendor waits for customers in front of a Walmart store in Beijing. Wal-Mart security staff is alleged to have beaten a woman, resulting in her death, for suspected shoplifting. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)
The woman was taken to the hospital after the assault and died three days later. Newspapers in China reported on the incident nearly a week after the woman’s death.
According to Southern Yangtze River Metropolis Daily, on the evening of Aug 30, a male Wal-Mart security guard suspected that a woman, Yu Xiachun, was shoplifting. He sent a female security guard to follow Yu after she exited the store. On her way home, Yu was stopped and surrounded by five Wal-Mart security guards, led by a male guard.
The security guard asked Yu for a store receipt. She gave him one, but then tried to take it back, when she realized that none of five wore store uniforms. They quarreled, and a serious fight ensued. Yu was knocked down to the ground and was taken to the hospital. The family later found the receipt in the woman’s clothes.
On the afternoon of September 1, the hospital informed Yu’s family that she was about to die. She died that night, three days after the assault. The victim was 37 years old.
Yu’s family said that Wal-Mart offered no apologies or any compensation for the woman’s death.
Police had formally arrested two of the five workers, while the other three were released for undisclosed reasons. The official regime paper China Daily reported on the incident on Tuesday, September 8.
Read the original Chinese article.
