Police in this port city in northeast China's Liaoning Province yesterday offered a reward
of 10,000 yuan (US$1,250) in exchange for clues leading to the
arrest of the person behind the murder of a family of four last
Saturday.
According to the police notice, the murders occurred in Laoyemiao
Village in the Wafangdian, the suburbs of Dalian, near Highway 202
from Dalian to Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
Any drivers who passed the section of the highway near the
village that night have been asked to provide information about
other vehicles seen exiting or entering the highway.
Police declined to provide more details about the case, saying
only that they had been ordered to capture the criminals by the end
of the year.
The Liaoshen Evening News, a local newspaper in
Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province, reported on Tuesday
that a couple and their two children had been murdered at Laoyemiao
Village.
The husband, Xie, 36, and wife, Song, 35, were found dead in
their house by Xie's elder brother on Sunday morning. The couple's
11-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son were missing.
The brother immediately called the police. Police investigators
said the couple had been bludgeoned to death with hammers. The
children were found dead in a well in the courtyard behind the
house.
Xie's house, an isolated two-story building near the highway, is
far from the village. The closest building was unoccupied on the
night of the murders. Workers at a petroleum station about 50
meters away did not hear any noise that night, according to the
paper's report.
The couple ran a restaurant out of their house and also managed
a transportation business consisting of two trucks, the neighbors
said.
Their home was equipped with a monitoring and alarm system, but
it had been shut off because business had been slow in the past
month, the paper quoted Xie's mother-in-law as saying.
(China Daily December 21, 2006)