Shenzhen court sentences teen to life imprisonment for murder of classmate

A 14-year-old male student in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, who brutally killed his female classmate in April, was sentenced to life imprisonment for intentional murder by the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in a first-instance trial. The court also revoked his political rights for life.

According to an announcement from the court on Friday, the defendant surnamed Zhong followed the victim, who was also 14, and stabbed her multiple times with a knife as she was about to return home at the entrance of her residential building at around 7 pm on April 8, 2025.

Upon hearing her call for help after falling to the ground, Zhong, who had left, returned and stabbed her several more times. Zhong then fled home and falsely claimed to his family that he had been injured in the hands while bravely acting to help others.

A subsequent forensic examination concluded that the girl's cause of death was "hemorrhagic shock due to penetrating wounds to the chest, back, and left subclavian region inflicted by a sharp object, resulting in a through-and-through injury to the heart, rupture of both lungs, and rupture of the subclavian vein."

The court determined that Zhong's actions were particularly cruel and the circumstances egregious, demonstrating severe malice. Despite this, because Zhong was under 18 at the time of the crime, the law mandates a more lenient sentence.

The deeply distressed and outraged parents of the victim had appealed for the death penalty for the perpetrator.

The victim's mother stated that, in her opinion, Zhong was a polite and quiet child, and she doesn't understand why he would kill her daughter in such a way.

The police's investigation revealed that Zhong acted out of jealousy and other personal grievances.

The trial revealed that Zhong had previously attempted to acquire poison and researched the legal consequences of murder by minors, learning that they could not be sentenced to death. He deleted these searches, but the police recovered them. He also conducted reconnaissance a day before the attack.

Professor Xiong Qiuhong from the China University of Political Science and Law said in a report from People's Daily that the sentence was appropriate given the flimsy motive, extreme cruelty, and premeditation. "Under our criminal law, minors under 18 at the time of the crime cannot receive the death penalty or a suspended death sentence. In this case, the defendant received life imprisonment and permanent loss of political rights, which is the harshest penalty available. This aligns with the international norm of not applying the death penalty to minors."