Watch CBS News

Man kills seven people in Wuhan stabbing rampage and jumps off bridge, police say

Police in central China were hunting Tuesday for a man who killed seven people, including a village Communist Party chief, before jumping off a bridge, officers said. The suspect, surnamed Gao, stabbed to death a family of five, including two children, in Wuhan on Sunday, the city's police force said in a statement on its official Weibo microblog.

The suspect fatally wounded a passerby and a cab driver while trying to steal a car to escape, it added, saying he then jumped off a bridge over the Yangtze River early Monday morning.

The police did not say whether the man was thought to have survived the jump.

Bridges over the Yangtze River are seen from the Wuhan Greenland center during its construction August 11, 2020, in Wuhan, China.
Bridges over the Yangtze River are seen from the Wuhan Greenland center during its construction August 11, 2020, in Wuhan, China. Getty Images

The party chief of Xiaosi township, his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren were among those stabbed to death, state-run news site China.org reported.

A wounded child found at the scene was still alive and rushed to a hospital, local media said.

Police said they were investigating. The massive city is where COVID-19 was first detected in late 2019.

China does not allow civilians to carry guns, and many violent crimes in recent decades have involved knives.

In February 2019, a man who suspected his wife of adultery stabbed eight others to death in a village in northwestern Gansu province.

In 2018, a knife-wielding man killed nine pupils outside a middle school in northern China's Shaanxi province.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.