A waitress who killed a man and injured another while claiming self-defense from rape used "excessive force", police said in a statement.

The case has now been handed over to the procuratorial authority, who will decide what charges, if any, she will face.

"We have finished the investigation," the Enshi Public Security Bureau said in a statement on Sunday.

Police believe waitress Deng Yujiao, 21, used "excessive force" when she allegedly killed Deng Guida and injured Huang Dezhi after she refused to join them in a bath on May 10. The two men, township officials of Badong county, under the administration of Enshi, pushed, shoved and verbally insulted her, according to a police statement from the Enshi Public Security Bureau.

Deng Yujiao took a knife and stabbed the two men, which was "excessive force", the statement said.

She called police after the attack and turned herself in.

Deng, released on bail last Tuesday from a detention center, is living with her family under police supervision.

"It is hard to say to what extent Deng's self-defense can effectively stop the three men, but reading from her former lawyers' description, I think excessive defense is farfetched," Zhou Zhe, a lawyer and professor of Youth College for Political Science told China Daily.

"You can't simply use the term 'excessive defense' just because someone is dead," Zhou said.

According to criminal law, "defense against violence, manslaughter, robbery, rape, kidnap and other violent criminal activities that endanger personal security, which cause the death of the offender, is not excessive defense, thus exempt from criminal responsibility".

Deng's two former lawyers yesterday declined to make any comments on a possible charge. They had released a detailed account of the attempted rape last week.

Huang, 41, the official injured in the incident, has been sacked from his post of vice director of the office of business delegations of Yesanguan township, as well as stripped of his CPC membership.

Deng Zhongjia, 45, another vice director of the same office who was also at the bathhouse but had not broken any laws or regulations, was also fired as the incident had caused a "bad social effect".

The attack on bathhouse waitress Deng Yujiao prompted waves of online support for her and pitiless condemnation for Huang and the dead Deng Guida.

The Hubei Public Security Bureau yesterday initiated a three-month campaign to rid entertainment venues of prostitution, gambling, drugs and organized crime, according to Hubei provincial media.

(China Daily June 2, 2009)