China executes couple who threw toddlers out of apartment window
China on Wednesday executed a couple for throwing two children out from the window of a high-rise apartment in 2020.
The Supreme Court had earlier sentenced Zhang Bo, the father of the toddlers, and Ye Chengchen, his girlfriend, to death for the premeditated murder of a two-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy.
The couple considered Bo’s children as “obstacles” to their marriage and staged an “accidental” fall from the 15th floor of a residential tower in the southwestern city of Chongqing, the Intermediate People’s Court said in a statement, reported AFP.
The court found their motive to be despicable and the means brutal, handing them the death penalty in its original judgment on 28 December 2021, reported the China Daily.
The man and woman “violated both the law and moral limits” for the act that caused “a terrible social influence,” a Chinese court said while delivering the conviction
Bo had begun an extra-marital affair with Chengchen from China’s Chongqing municipality and soon after he divorced his wife Chen Meilin in February 2020, the two decided to kill the children.
The father threw his one-year-old son and two-year-old daughter out of the 14th-floor window of his high-rise building after calling both of them to his apartment.
Chengchen was sentenced to death because she forced Bo to kill the children, the Chongqing No 5 Intermediate People’s Court said in its verdict.
The court said Chengchen did not want her future husband to have children from other women.
It said Chengchen and Bo began dating in 2019. Chengchen had allegedly asked the father to kill his two children on several occasions because her parents had objected to her getting married to a man who already had children.
The court documents revealed that Chengchen told Bo: “When the kids are gone, I will marry you… Why don’t you kill both since you will be killing anyway?”
“When Zhang Bo hesitated, Chengchen forced him to commit the crime, and finally he followed through with the murder,” read the verdict.
After he threw his children out of the window, he was seen by some neighbours crying beside them.
One of the children had died on the spot while the other was declared dead in a hospital.
The couple however, appealed against the ruling, leading to a second trial that began at the Chongqing Higher People’s Court.
In May 2023, the court upheld the original ruling, submitting it for review before the Supreme People’s Court, as per legal provisions that require the top court’s approval for execution.
