35 dead after driver drives car into crowd at sports center in China’s deadliest known attack in a decade

Thirty-five people were killed in southern China after a man drove his car into a crowd training at an outdoor sports center on Monday evening, police said. This was the deadliest attack on the public in ten years.

Another 43 people were injured and hospitalized in the rampage in the southern city of Zhuhai, local police said in a statement on Tuesday.

Police said the driver, identified as a 62-year-old man named Fan, was apprehended while attempting to flee. An initial investigation revealed he was unhappy with the outcome of a divorce settlement, she added.

The death toll is the highest China has seen since 2014, when a series of terrorist attacks rocked the far western region of Xinjiang. But sudden acts of violence in recent months targeting random members of the public — including schoolchildren — have spread across the country as economic growth falters, unnerving a public long accustomed to low violent crime rates and ubiquitous surveillance.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping described the mass car crash in Zhuhai as “extremely cruel” and called for the perpetrator to be severely punished in accordance with the law, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Police said Fan’s small all-terrain vehicle entered the grounds of the sports complex and struck people training at a track around 7:48 pm on Monday.

When police intercepted his escape, Fan was found self-harming with a knife in the car and taken to hospital for treatment, the statement said.

“Due to a serious self-inflicted neck injury, Fan is currently unconscious, still undergoing emergency treatment and cannot be questioned,” police said.

Outside the sports center, some Zhuhai residents laid wreaths, candles and bottles of Chinese alcohol to mourn the victims, but these were quickly removed by authorities, Reuters reported.

Deliverers on motorcycles continued to deliver flowers to the location on Wednesday, but the bouquets were immediately removed by security staff deployed there, sometimes before anyone could put them on the ground, according to Reuters.

The car crash occurred the night before Zhuhai hosted China’s largest civil and military air show, which runs from November 12 to 17.

Chinese officials have often carefully controlled and censored information following attacks on the public in a country where the ruling Communist Party prizes stability. The media attention on Zhuhai because of the air show and the high number of fatalities resulting from the attack only seemed to have increased sensitivity.

It took a full day for Zhuhai authorities to release information about the victims. The initial statement from police on Monday, consisting of just two paragraphs, stated bluntly that a car “knocked down several pedestrians.”

As news of the attack spread, censors intervened to remove online videos of the attack and moderate discussions on social media. Witness accounts and some Chinese media reports describing what happened were also censored.

Online videos of the aftermath, geolocated by CNN, show dozens of people lying on jogging paths and nearby areas, their shoes scattered.

Many of the injured were wearing sports outfits, including the uniforms of at least two local fitness walking groups.

Chinese media outlet Caixin reported that the SUV crashed into several fitness walking groups, hitting dozens of participants. Many of the injured were middle-aged and elderly, although there were also teenagers and children among them, Caixin reported.

“(The vehicle) smashed everywhere and injured people in different parts of the circular track of the sports field, in the eastern, southern, western and northern areas,” a witness surnamed Liu told Caixin.

The Zhuhai Sports Center features an outdoor athletics track and is visited by locals for daily exercise. Following the incident, the center announced it would be closed until further notice.

When police finally provided a more detailed account of events on Tuesday evening, they returned to the question of how much information to reveal.

An early version of the statement noted Fan’s repeated attempt to sue his ex-wife over disputes over the division of their assets. Dissatisfied with the rulings of the original trial and appeal, he requested a new trial, which is still ongoing, the original statement said. But that paragraph was soon removed in an updated version.

On Tuesday evening, Xi urged officials to “prevent risks at the source” and “immediately resolve conflicts and disputes” to prevent such incidents from happening again.

China, a country of 1.4 billion people, has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world, thanks in part to strict gun controls and strong mass surveillance. But the country has suffered a wave of attacks on random civilians in recent months.

In October, police arrested a 50-year-old man after a stabbing near a primary school in Beijing injured five people, including three children.

In September, three people were killed and 15 others injured in a knife attack on a supermarket in a Shanghai suburb.

Also in September, a bus crashed into a crowd of students and parents outside a school in the city of Tai’an in Shandong province, killing 11 people and injuring 13 others. Authorities did not reveal whether this was accidental or intentional.

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