On the morning of July 31, Mrs. Yao came back to her home in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, to find her two young daughters dead, brutally murdered by her own husband. One child was 10 and the other only 7; if they had survived, they would have currently been entering fifth and second grade, respectively.
The older daughter was found lying motionless in the bathroom, with her little sister similarly still on her bed. Both of their necks had been messily cut. Photos of the scene show bloodstains on the floor of the bathroom. Yao's husband, whose last name is Xu, was taken into police custody shortly after the murders.
According to Yao, Xu had been showing symptoms of mental illness for roughly two and a half years prior to the incident. He’d been sent to Kangning Hospital three times during that period, and had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
However, his murderous deed came as a total surprise to her. He’d never attempted to hurt the children before, and he was also afraid of blood. Xu didn’t “even dare kill a chicken,” Yao remembered.
Her perceptions were turned upside down on July 31, when Yao returned to her home in Yangguang Yayuan Residential Area to find a tragedy awaiting her. She had left the apartment around 7am that morning to do some grocery shopping, and got back at 8.20am to find the door locked. She knocked, expecting one of her daughters to answer the door, but no one answered.
Yao was getting worried when Xu opened the door. Once inside, it must have seemed that the worst of her nightmares had come true.
Yao speaks fondly of her daughters: the 10-year-old, she says, was easygoing with a lively mind. She’d been recognized at school for her good behavior and grades.
The younger girl, on the other hand, was gentle and artistic. Her talents for music and dance had won her a gold prize at her school’s combined arts contest this year.
Yao told reporters that her husband had first begun acting strange at the end of 2013, saying things she couldn’t understand and complaining that there were people watching him, trying to hurt him.
She ended up taking him to Kangning Hospital for treatment. The records there show that in January 2015, Xu was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had been displaying symptoms of disorganized speech and behavior, as well as paranoia, for over a year.
At first when he was admitted to the hospital in 2015, he was belligerent, lashing out at family members and staff alike. By the end of his stay, however, his behavior had seen improvement.
In October 2015, he was re-admitted and diagnosed again, this time with paranoid schizophrenia, a subtype of the illness (in 2013 the American Psychological Association stopped recognizing subtypes due to “limited diagnostic stability, low reliability, and poor validity”).
It seems that Xu once again recovered and was released. Afterwards, he seemed to be on the mend. By June of this year, Yao says, she had convinced him to take medications under his own volition. In July, he even worked for two weeks at his old job. The murder of his two young daughters came out of the blue, just when it seemed that he was on the road to recovery.
Yao, however, has little sympathy for her husband now, saying he deserves capital punishment.
“This is too cruel, I can’t accept it, a death sentence will be his exoneration. Two daughters dying so tragically, if not [executed] it’s not fair to them.”
Nanshan police say the whole affair is still under investigation.
[Images via Southern Metropolis Daily]
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