Is the murderer of Fujian schoolchildren mentally ill?

Dongguan Times, March 24, 2010

Most newspaper front pages today focus, some in graphic detail, on the horrific March 23 Fujian Nanping (福建南平) incident, where 8 (or 9, depending on which account you read) primary school students were stabbed to death by a man at 7.20am in the morning.

The one above, which is from the Dongguan Times, has a caption that says that clothes left by the students could still be seen at the gate of the school. Its headline says, in large black writing (with a red "8"): "One minute of blackness and 8 students leave school forever."

Some newspapers have created cartoon layouts of the scene, the Daqing Evening News has one that is particularly bloody. Other front pages focus on relatives crying at the news that one victim, who was taken to hospital, will become a vegetable (one woman in red is reproduced throughout the country's different papers).

Many papers reported that the suspect, Zheng Minsheng (郑民生), a retired local doctor, is suspected to be mentally ill. However, in papers such as Jiangsu's Yangzi Evening Post (扬子晚报) and the Dongguan Times, "suspected of being mentally ill" (疑似有精神病) didn't dominate the headlines (the Dongguan Times put it on their sub-headline). Instead, there were elaborations on the man's unlucky romantic history and failed attempts to get work after quitting his job. From the Dongguan Times:

On the 23rd, the spokesman for Fujian province, Nanping city Public Security Bureau Huang Zhongping (黄忠平) said that the identification of suspect for the serious murder spree at Nanping Experimental Primary School, Zheng Minsheng (郑民生), has been verified. Zheng was born on April 30, 1968 and graduated from a technical middle school, he is unmarried, and used to be a doctor at the Mazhan Community Clinic (马站社区诊所). He quit in June 2009.

According to a statement made by the suspect, the motivation for his murder was that people looked down on him, saying that he had bad luck with women; his marriage proposals were never smooth, and his girlfriends didn't want to marry him. Also, after his resignation, his couldn't find successful employment, and thought that life wasn't very interesting.

As for some reports that the suspect has a history of mental illness, the local government said that at present there hasn't been any official medical records or diagnoses from medical institutions. About whether the suspect really has mental illness, more investigation is needed.

The other headlines on the Dongguan Times is a mixed bag:

• In Dongguan, two direct routes have been "opened" for the first time for Tomb Sweeping Day (清明节), which rests on April 3 －6, transporting the public to different parlors around the city, in order for residents to visit the dead.
• Serious drought in the Southwest is extending to Guangdong and Hunan provinces.
• Dongguan government opens "emergency" website (this is reported to be partly a consulting website when large-scale incidents happen).
• A girl who is working in Dongguan is seriously ill. She wants to go home to Henan province, and the newspaper provides a telephone number for anyone who wants to help.