China executes man who killed two toddlers with rat poison

[News_Editor]

China executes man who killed two toddlers with rat poison

2011-05-29 19:08:50 GMT+7 (ICT)

BEIJING (BNO NEWS) -- China on Sunday said it has executed a man who previously admitted to killing two toddlers at a kindergarten with rat poison, state-run media reported.

Li Shengguang, 68, was arrested in June 2009 after 21 toddlers at the Muge Township Wenda Kindergarten in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southern China were sickened by a rat poison called Dushuqiang, which is widely used in rural areas of China.

Li was the owner of the land where the kindergarten was built and had a long-running dispute with Lu Zhikun, a contractor at the school. According to Li's confession, Li decided to put rat poison into a meal which was intended for Lu.

But Lu did not eat the meal as Li had planned, and Lu instead added it to porridge which was given to the kindergarten's children for lunch. Soon after, the 21 children who ate the porridge fell sick.

One of the poisoned toddlers died before reaching the hospital, while another toddler died hours later. Six others were also seriously ill and had to be taken to an intensive care unit at Guigang People's Hospital.

Li was arrested a day after the murders and soon confessed to putting the poison in Lu's food. He was found guilty and sentenced to death on August 25, 2010 by Guigang City Intermediate People's Court. He did not appeal the verdict.

The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say when Li was executed, or how, but according to Amnesty International, China carries out its executions by either a lethal injection or by shooting.

It is unknown how many people are executed in China each year as the government considers these figures it to be a state secret. But according to Amnesty International, the figure is at least 'thousands'.

In November 2010, China said it executed 37-year-old Cheng Ruilong who was previously convicted of murdering and raping 11 people, including three police officers, between May 1996 and January 2005. Charges for the alleged murders of a mother and her daughter were dropped as their bodies have never been recovered.

And in December 2009, China executed 53-year-old British citizen Akmal Shaikh who had been convicted of smuggling drugs into China. It sparked international condemnation as Shaikh reportedly had a mental illness, which may have been exploited by criminals. He was the first European national to be executed in China since 1951.

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