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Policeman killed at Beijing's Summer Palace
A police officer was fatally stabbed and two civilians injured Sunday morning by two armed men in a square at the Summer Palace, a famous tourist spot in the Chinese capital, a spokesman with the Beijing Public Security Bureau (BPSB) said in Beijing Sunday.
According to the spokesman, 34-year-old officer Yuan Shiguang with the Donggongmen Station of the BPSB's Haidian Branch, was on patrol at 8:15 a.m. at the Summer Palace when he noticed two young men acting suspiciously in the already huge crowd of visitors.
Yuan approached the pair at Donggongmen Square and began talking to them, when one drew a knife from his belt and stabbed Yuan in the stomach. Bystanders Zhang Lin and He Qi, who are not from Beijing, ran to help Yuan.
The man who stabbed Yuan also knifed the two samaritans, one in the arm and the other in the chest.
Despite their injuries, Yuan, Zhang and He ran after the fleeing suspects. Yuan ran for about 70 meters before he fell to the ground and died, the spokesman said.
Zhang and He caught one of the suspects about a kilometer into the chase. The suspect was turned over to the police.
Both men were hospitalized but their wounds are not life-threatening, sources with the BPSB said.
Haidian police who were on the lookout for the second suspect caught him in western Beijing five hours after he fled the murder scene.
Both suspects, who are migrants, are in police custody in Beijing, the spokesman said, adding that the two have confessed to the murder.
Statistics from the past 20 years show that more than 5,000 Chinese police have died in the line of duty and 100,000 more were injured. Some 533 policemen lost their lives and 5,885 were wounded last year while on the job.
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