A Chinese kindergarten teacher was executed on Thursday for poisoning 25 of her pupils in 2019, culminating in the death of one child.
Wang Yun, age 40, was found guilty of poisoning her students by adding sodium nitrite to their food.
Chinese Kindergarten Teacher Who Poisoned Her 25 Students, Executed
She was initially sentenced to nine months in prison for causing intentional injury, but her sentence was changed in September 2020.
The Associated Press reported that a notice posted outside a court in China on Friday indicated that Wang had been executed the previous day. Wang added sodium nitrite to the children's porridge on March 27, 2019, at Mengmeng Preschool Education, where she taught at the time.
After an argument with a colleague over how the students should be managed, Wang poisoned the students. According to Poison Control, ingesting nitrite can cause a lack of oxygen, which makes it difficult to breathe, as well as "confusion, loss of consciousness, seizures, abnormal cardiac rhythms, and mortality."
According to the court notice, 24 students sustained minor injuries and recovered from the poisoning, but one student died in 2020 from organ failure after ten months of treatment. This was not Wang's first occasion using sodium nitrite. AP reported that she also poisoned her spouse, who survived with only minor injuries.
Per CBS News, Wang had a dispute with a coworker identified only by surname Sun over "student administration." While revenge was portrayed as Wang's motivation, it was unclear whether or not she intended to murder her husband and the students.
The judge denied Wang's appeal. She was taken to an execution site and executed. It is believed that China executes more prisoners annually than the rest of the world combined, though the exact number is a state secret.
Most sentences are carried out with a gunshot to the back of the head, although mobile lethal injection units have been used in a few instances.
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China's School Violence
In China, attacks on young students have become a disturbing trend in recent years, with most perpetrators being described as mentally ill or harboring grudges against individuals or society.
Private firearms ownership is prohibited in China, so knives and improvised explosives are typically used in these assaults. On Monday, a man armed with a knife killed six and injured one at a kindergarten in southeastern China.
Following the 7:40 a.m. assault in Guangdong province's Lianjiang city, a 25-year-old man was apprehended. A news source, Dafeng News, cited an unidentified witness who stated that the attacker's child was injured by a vehicle belonging to one of the school's victims.
It was also stated that one of the victims was a kindergarten teacher, but other details were ambiguous. The attacks have persisted despite orders to increase school security following the deaths of approximately 20 children in 2010.
Some social scientists have attributed school attacks to the inadequacies of the health system in diagnosing and treating mental illness, despite the relatively low incidence of violent crime in China's rigidly controlled society.
Professional fatigue and other economic factors are beginning to play a role now that the formerly booming economy has slowed substantially.
The court's decision to sentence Wang to death may have been influenced by the plummeting birthrate and dwindling population, both of which contribute to the heightened significance of assaults on schoolchildren.
