China's public security ministry has said that it has sent a work team to Qing'an in northeastern Heilongjiang Province to investigate local railway police's killing of an unarmed man at Qing'an Railway Station.
Officers shot Xu Chunhe to death on May 2 in front of his three young children and elderly mother as the family traveled to Beijing to seek financial assistance that their local government had denied them.
Xu, 45, allegedly lost his temper and stopped other passengers from entering the station after he and his family were unable to board their train to the capital.
Police have so far refused to release CCTV footage from within the station to the public; however, video shot by an eyewitness shows Xu thrashing a ticket machine as a railway police officer strikes at him with a long metal pole.
Xu then grabs hold of the pole and attempts to wrest it from the officer's hands. Police also allege that Xu threatened to take the officer's gun from him.
A lawyer for Xu's family has said that the officer should be tried for murder. While the reason Xu and his family could not board their train is not yet known, petitioners who seek to overturn a decision made by their local government are often stopped from traveling to Beijing or forcibly returned by local authorities.
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