Knife attack in Beijing store leaves 1 dead, 3 hurt

Photo taken on July 22, 2013 shows the outdoor scene of a Carrefour store where a knife attack occurred in Beijing, capital of China. A knife-wielding man allegedly injured four people, including two children, on Monday in the Carrefour store. (Xinhua/Ma Jing)

A Carrefour store is cordoned off after a knife attack occurred in Beijing, capital of China, July 22, 2013. A knife-wielding man allegedly injured four people, including two children, on Monday in the Carrefour store. (Xinhua/Ma Jing)

A knife-wielding man killed a woman and injured three people, including a 2-year-old boy, on Monday in a supermarket in Beijing.

The incident took place at around 11:40 am in the Carrefour store at Maliandao Lu in Beijing's Xicheng district. Four people were injured, one of whom later died in hospital.

The suspect, surnamed Wang, was captured on the spot, police said. Radio Beijing Corporation reported on its official Sina Weibo account that Wang arrived in Beijing Monday morning by train and went directly to the supermarket. It was said that he bought a fruit knife some 20 centimeters long and started attacking customers.

It is not known where Wang had traveled to and what the motive was behind the stabbing.

Wang was born in 1963 and is a Beijing native, said the statement published on the Beijing public security bureau's Weibo account.

The injured were taken to hospital. China Central Television (CCTV) reported that a middle-aged woman, surnamed Liu, was stabbed in her chest and died Monday afternoon in Beijing Xuanwu Hospital. A male victim, surnamed Chen, was stabbed on his chest and stomach and a third victim, Yuan Yuan, a 12-year-old boy, was wounded on the back.

The killer also attacked a boy of only 2 and a half years old, whose intestines were ruptured after being stabbed several times in the back. CCTV reported that the boy's condition is stable after surgery in Beijing Children's Hospital.

Police have cordoned off the scene, and people are not allowed to go into the Carrefour store.

On July 9, the Beijing public security bureau published a crime map, which listed 19 areas in the city with the highest crime rate, and the Maliandao Lu area is one of them.

The incident was the second stabbing in Beijing in a week after a man from Shandong Province stabbed two pedestrians, including a foreigner, to death at the Joy City shopping mall in Chaoyang district on Wednesday.