Man stabs second-grade girl in Taipei school bathroom
2015/05/29 23:38:45
Taipei, May 29 (CNA) A man stabbed and nearly killed a second-grade girl on Friday when the child went to the bathroom alone at her elementary school in Taipei's Beitou District, in a random attack that has shocked many people in Taiwan.
Local police said the 29-year-old suspect, surnamed Kung, had climbed over Wenhua Elementary School's back wall and followed the girl as she walked to the bathroom by herself, without her teacher's knowledge, around 4 p.m. He forced her into the bathroom and stabbed her in the neck area, police said.
The girl, 8, sustained severe knife wounds on her throat and was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Fifteen minutes after the girl went to the bathroom, a classmate discovered she had been stabbed.
The suspect did not leave the school and called the police himself. He was arrested by the police within three minutes of them receiving the phone call.
The suspect claimed that he was driven to attack the girl by the voices inside his head, as well as social pressure, and unemployment woes, according to the police.
He has no prior criminal record or history of mental illness.
Kung was silent as reporters surrounded him while police took him out of the school and transported him to a local police station for questioning.
He has no other connection to the girl apart from being an alumni of the same elementary school.
Chen Wen-chih (陳文智), chief of the Taipei City Police Department's Beitou Precinct, said that Kung had claimed to be suffering from auditory hallucinations since he was in elementary school.
He added that Kung had claimed that his auditory hallucinations had been escalating in the two days leading up to the attack.
Following a four-hour emergency surgery that concluded at around 9:00 p.m., the girl is reported to be in critical but stable condition. Surgeons indicated that she had suffered severe damage to her trachea, blood vessels, and muscles and tendons due to the 10-cm knife wound on her throat.
Police also denied rumors that Kung had boasted about wanting to become the second Cheng Jie, a New Taipei man who killed four passengers and injured 22 others during a stabbing spree on a a MRT subway train in the capital in May last year.
Concurrently, Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that a task force aimed at improving security on school campuses will hold a meeting on Friday evening.
Meanwhile, the distraught family of the girl said they wished that the voices inside Kung's head had compelled him to turn the knife on himself, instead of on their innocent child.
(By Long Pei-ning, Liu Jien-bung, Huang Lih-yun and Ted Chen)
