A court in southern China sentenced Fan Weiqiu to death on the event date of December 27, 2024, after finding him responsible for a vehicle attack in Zhuhai that killed 35 people and injured dozens more.
The supplied AP report says Fan drove into a crowd of people exercising at a sports center, killing 35 and injuring another 43. The attack triggered national concern because of both the number of victims and the bluntness of the method: instead of a covert weapon or a staged explosive, the suspect allegedly used a car to strike a public gathering in one of the country's most heavily watched urban settings. The court said Fan had pleaded guilty to endangering public safety by dangerous means.
The motive described by the court was personal rather than ideological. Officials said Fan was venting anger over an unsatisfactory divorce settlement. That explanation is important because it places the attack in the category often described in China as “revenge on society” violence, where personal frustration becomes public harm. The court said the crime was despicable in motive, cruel in method and severe in consequence, language that reflects the seriousness with which Chinese authorities were treating the case.
The timing of the ruling also mattered. The AP report says the sentence was handed down unusually quickly, just weeks after the attack, and came amid a broader political push by Xi Jinping for local governments to reduce the risk of future “extreme cases.” According to the source, local leaders were told to look more closely at disputes such as marital conflict and inheritance fights that could trigger violence. That response shows the Zhuhai attack was being treated not just as a criminal case but as a warning sign for public-order policy.
The case was also notable because Chinese authorities have moved rapidly in other recent mass-casualty cases. The source says a court earlier that week handed down a suspended death sentence with a two-year reprieve to a driver who injured 30 people by driving into elementary school students and parents in Hunan province. That comparison underscores the speed and severity of the courts' response to crowd attacks in late 2024.
The AP report also notes that Chinese authorities tightly control public information about such incidents. Videos and eyewitness accounts are often censored, and basic details may emerge only many hours later. In this case, the death toll in Zhuhai was not announced until 24 hours after the attack. That delay is part of the broader environment around mass-violence coverage in China, where official releases often arrive after social media chatter has been suppressed.
The trial outcome therefore closed one phase of the case while opening another set of questions about prevention. Fan Weiqiu is now under a death sentence, but the wider issue that preoccupied Beijing was how to keep personal disputes from turning into public attacks. The source makes clear that the Zhuhai case was seen as part of a pattern of “revenge on society” crimes, not an isolated burst of violence. On the event date, the verified facts were already devastating: 35 dead, 43 injured, a guilty plea and a death sentence.
