Is it just us, or is this week’s news crazier than usual? Today brings us shocking photos of a father driven by fear and desperation to threatening the lives of his own family with a 40cm blade. Unbelievably, his only reason appears to be that he feared retribution for a traffic accident he had just committed.

At around 2pm on May 27, a Sichuanese man committed a hit-and-run traffic accident in Chuxiong, Yunnan. He failed to escape, however, and when confronted by a blockade of traffic police, resorted to holding his wife and young daughter hostage at knife point. In the two-hour ordeal that followed, negotiators successfully convinced him to release his wife. Crowds of onlookers then watched as a special police force swiftly took down the suspect and saved the daughter.



Insane acts of violence to escape punishment for relatively minor crimes appear to be a trend in China recently. One of the most high-profile news stories of this year so far was the sentencing of Yao Jiaxin, a 21-year-old music student who brutally stabbed a girl to death after hitting her with his car because he feared the trouble she would bring him.

Many of the more than 25,000 comments on the Netease photos this week express shock and disdain for the man’s behavior. Stabbing a total stranger is one thing, but in a country where offspring is all but worshiped, these actions are pretty unbelievable. It has prompted many to quote the Chinese proverb 虎毒不食子 (Hǔ dú bù shí zǐ), or roughly “No matter how ferocious the tiger, it never eats its young.”

(Photos via Netease and Shenzhen News)

