A 50-year-old government official lay slumped in a pool of blood on his office chair. His family, after finding him, counted 11 wounds on his body. The artery on his left wrist was slit; his right wrist sustained a few cuts. There were three stabs into his abdomen and four cuts to his neck, including one that was seven inches long and another that sliced through his trachea and throat.
The family waited to hear from police. But when they did, they were in disbelief. The police deemed it suicide.
On Friday afternoon, family members lost contact with Xie Yexin, a cadre for the county Disciplinary Committee in China’s southern province of Hubei. After Xie didn’t make it home that night, his family members went looking for him at first light, only to find him dead.
The police findings, following two days of investigation, were greeted with skepticism by the victim’s family and netizens.
“If he really committed suicide, how could he cut his left wrist first and then his right wrist?” one family member questioned. “How could he be able to make so many cuts to his throat? How could he still have the strength to stab his trachea and abdomen?”
Mr. Wan, a local resident and friend of Xie, who rushed to Xie’s office upon hearing of his death, said in an interview that nobody in the county believed Xie had committed suicide.
“If he had committed suicide this way, it would have been extremely painful,” said Wan. “I’ve never heard of anyone committing suicide in such a bloody way.”
Wan said people more commonly commit suicide by consuming pesticides, hanging themselves, jumping into a river, or cutting their wrist--instead of stabbing themselves all over the place.
Wan said instead of suicide, he believes Xie was murdered for his involvement in the investigation of the corruption of developer Sanyuan International Group.
Another acquaintance, a female coworker speaking on condition of anonymity, also speculated that Xie was murdered due to his connection with the corruption investigation. But when she was about to give a more detailed account of the case, she was interrupted by a male and the phone was then hung up.
As the news spread over the Internet, netizen Political Scapegoat said on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, “Amazing! He cut his abdomen, neck, left wrist and right wrist before he died. Those who claimed Xie had committed suicide are really geniuses.”
Another netizen known as Low-eye Sun said, “How long can you keep hiding the truth? ... Alas! Here is another case of ’suicide.' When can we start having true news reports?”
Read the original Chinese article.
Stabbing Death of Chinese Official Investigating Corruption Deemed Suicide
Police say a Chinese graft-investigating government official died of a suicide despite 11 stab wounds on his body.
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