A Chinese man was sentenced to death Thursday for killing Chinese bus attendant Hu Youping in a knife attack near Shanghai last summer. A Japanese mother and her child were also injured on a Japanese school bus in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi praised Hu for trying to stop the attack. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI |
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Jan. 23 (UPI) -- A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced a man to death for a fatal knife attack near Shanghai last summer.
The man, 52-year-old Zhou Jiasheng, was jobless, in debt and didn't want to continue living, a Chinese government official told reporters in Tokyo.
A Japanese mother and her child were also injured on a Japanese school bus in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. The man who was killed tried to stop the attack.
The Japanese woman in her 30s was waiting at the bus stop for her preschool child to come from school.
Japanese Consul General in Shanghai Masauro Okada was in court to hear the death sentence ruling. The court said the murder was "extremely heinous and made a huge social impact, therefore it deserves the death penalty."
The Chinese bus attendant killed in the knife attack was Hu Youping.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi praised Hu's actions and expressed concern for the injured mother and child.
"The government considers the act of killing and injuring three people -- including an innocent child -- to be absolutely unforgivable," Hayashi said. "Taking this verdict into account, the government will continue to strongly urge the Chinese authorities to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China."
Attacks on Japanese living in China are creating diplomatic tensions between the nations. But according to China's Foreign Ministry, the June stabbing and a September stabbing death of a Japanese student in China were not indications that Japanese are being targeted.
The ministry called them isolated lone-wolf acts and said China is one of the safest nations in the world.