News of what could be a triple homicide is bubbling through the blogosphere this weekend, despite a reported ban on coverage.

ObserveChina reports (via ESWN translation) a taxi driver, his father and wife are dead at the hands of police officer Su Kai in a suburb north of Dalian.

A police officer with the Dalian Railroad Department fired five shots to kill a family of three who had showed up to demand compensation. The local government and publicity department censored all news. All information on websites were deleted and the media were not allowed to cover the story. The world still do not know what will happen to police officer Su Kai who fired the shots as well as the results of the police investigation.

On April 26, the sounds of five gunshots rang out in the duty room of the public security bureau in Xiongyuecheng town, Dalian. A taxi driver Wang Hongwu, his wife and his 62-year-old father were dead. The police quickly sealed the news so that the local media could not report on the incident. The Publicity Department forbade the national media from following up. The truth of the case is being investigated. But the attempt to black out the news is seriously violating the right of the victims’ family and the people as a whole to know. It is also possible that there is a risk for black box transaction behind the scene. All this is eroding the people’s trust in the local government.

On the day of the incident, Beifang Net published a news report. But by the next night, it was deleted. The local media received ban orders not to report on the incident. On April 28, Yunnan’s Chuncheng Evening News and Fujian’s Haixia Metropolis Daily made brief reports. But all the nationally influential newspapers quickly received orders not to report.

I haven’t found anything published in English on this, except through ESWN. ObserveChina is blocked on my ISP but available through a proxy.

ESWN says a Baidu News search on “Dalian”+”Police” (大连 警察) found a Dongbei Net news report at Shuimou Net with additional photographs and a different account of the events leading up to the taxi driver’s death.

According to ObserveChina, the officer is 37 and was assigned to Xiongyuecheng three months ago. “It is still unknown why he fired the shots,” ObserveChina wrote. “But the police seemed very angry at the information being spread around the Internet and they said that those were irresponsible false information.”

I’m curious to see if any more information—official or otherwise—comes out on this. ObserveChina says a “special case squad” is investigating the incident. The more I read the two accounts—at ObserveChina and Shuimou, both via ESWN—the more complicated this case seems.

“At this time, we only know that a police officer fired five shots which killed three persons. The exact cause is still being investigated. There are many causes. Did they attack the police officer? Did they take any action? The case is still undecided,” ObserveChina quotes an unnamed Dalian Railroad Public Security Bureau officer as saying.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 6:47 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.