CHINA—A former employee from Nanjing City Huafei Corporation seeking revenge on his former supervisor stabbed another man to death by mistake in November. Video footage of the crime scene shows that 56 Huafei employees walked past the man who was lying in a pool of blood but no one tried to help him or call the police. According to reports from Jinling Evening News , the victim and assailant were both ex-employees of Nanjing Huafei Color Display Systems Corp. Ltd. Around 6:30 am on November 2, the assailant Zhang Peng plunged a 7cm fruit knife into the victim’s chest and fled the scene without looking back. 12 hours later, accompanied by his sister in law, he turned himself in at a local police station. Zhang was told by the Police officer that the man had died from the stabbing wounds but the murder victim was not the one he intended to kill.
In mid-October, Zhang was fired for “not observing company policies and not being able to adapt to the job”. Before that, he had been criticized by his team leader Ma Qing for things such as taking a break while he was supposed to be on duty and being late for his shift. This led Zhang to become very angry with his supervisor.
After his dismissal, Zhang tried to find employment somewhere else but was unsuccessful. The pressure of unemployment and his inability to rationalize led him to blame Ma Qing for all his misfortunes.
The first report of the incident did not raise any public attention until 20 days later, when Nanjing City Television Station broadcast the video recording of the murder scene on its Oriental Online Program . The audience was so shocked to see that 56 employees from the company walked past the dead man but no one stopped to help or call the police. Some only took a few glances and walked past quickly. Even though the man was lying in a pool of blood, nobody did anything. Even a security guard on duty standing beside the murdered man turned a blind eye to the corpse on the ground.
“Fifty-six people walking by is an unimaginable number, it is a testament of a dying life where nobody cared,” said the host of Oriental Online Program .
“If that security guard had called the police in time, if someone had called the ambulance, if any of those had carried him to the hospital only several hundred meters away, perhaps the man would be still alive today. The man was stabbed by the assailant’s sharp knife yet was also killed by the indifference of those who passed by.”
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