A tragic event unfolded yesterday evening at the TaiPingMen Skyways Bakery/Cafe. A 16 year old student went to meet and presumably break off an online relationship she had been having with a 20 year old Shenzhen boy on the Internet. In the anger that followed she was taken hostage and was stabbed  a dozen times before later dying in the hospital due to massive blood loss. The police shot the suspect and took him into custody.

Incidents like these remind you of the fragile and sometime cruel nature of life. Condolences to her family in this horribly difficult time.

It’s difficult to think of ways this could have been avoided, at 16 you wouldn’t expect the parents to need or even be able to monitor their child’s activities 24/7, the weapon used was not some illegal firearm, but a typical knife, and while some may blame the internet, it seems it could have instead just as easily been someone she met in class or at a cafe. The meeting place was a public location which would be presumably safe. For those of us with children, this seems an especially hopeless scenario, how can you prepare your children to avoid somewhat random acts of violence in society?

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China Daily synopsis

Story from dsqq.cn (Chinese)

Update: China Daily has an updated article here. text below:

Girl killed by ‘lover’ she met on Internet

A schoolgirl who went to a cake shop to break up with her Internet “lover” died after being taken hostage and stabbed by the man.

The man was shot in a police attempt to save the girl and is recovering in a hospital.

The girl, believed to be about 16 years old, met the man in a cake shop near her school around 5:30 on Monday in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

“I was told Fang (the school girl) was there to meet her Internet ‘lover’, who came to see her from Shenzhen,” said a schoolboy surnamed Wang who goes to the same school as the girl. “Don’t know what went wrong.”

According to police, the man stabbed the girl because she wanted to break up with him.

Fang had previously skipped school to visit the man, said her teacher, who rushed to the scene after receiving a call regarding the incident.

The girl had already been stabbed several times before the emergency call was made, but she was still alive when police arrived. All three shop employees and customers had escaped.

The man held Fang close to his body as a shield and pointed the knife against her throat to resist arrest. Fang had several stab wounds and was bleeding heavily, according to police.

When police were unable to arrest the man, two snipers in position outside the cake shop fired two shots at him around 6:50 pm. Both the schoolgirl and the stabber were then taken to hospital, but Fang was confirmed dead due to excessive blood loss.

Her Internet “lover” was still hospitalized. No other information has been released about him.