A fatal traffic accident on June 10 in the city of Shantou, southern China, turned into a bloody riot involving thousands of people.
When an official driving a Mercedes-Benz hit a family of three in the night, he tried to escape the scene, but was surrounded by a crowd of locals. He then dialed some associates and summoned a gang of machete-wielding thugs to ward off the onlookers, causing multiple knife injuries in addition to the victims of his driving.
According to a local witness, the incident happened about 9:30 p.m. at a crosswalk on an intersection. The victims were a man, and wife, and their infant child. The Mercedes hit all three; the baby died instantly. The man is in emergency care and the woman may have succumbed to her injuries, the local told Epoch Times.
Immediately after the incident, the driver, reported to be a village-level Communist Party secretary surnamed Ji, was confronted by onlookers and relatives of the victims. Ji made a phone call, and soon about a dozen men armed with machetes and with red armbands arrived and began hacking at the seven or eight people surrounding Ji. A fight ensued.
