Society

Gunman killed by police after 10-hr standoff

By Zheng Caixiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-04 07:36

Police officers in a standoff with a gunman in Guangzhou's Baiyun district, June 3, 2010.[Provided to China Daily]

GUANGZHOU - It was right out of a Hollywood gangster movie: A man with a home-made pistol shoots a senior police officer and holds off a well-equipped police team for 10 hours before he is shot dead.

The scene, rare in China where private gun ownership is prohibited, was played out Thursday on busy Jingxi street in Baiyun district of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province.

A deputy police chief surnamed Chen was seriously wounded after he took a bullet in his stomach. A doctor at nearby Nanfang Hospital would only say that he suffered a "serious injury".

Wu Sha, director of the Guangzhou public security bureau, rushed to the scene to direct operations against the suspect, Chen Guosheng.

Snipers, firefighters, doctors and sniffer dogs were sent to the scene. All the residents in the building where the shooting took place were evacuated.

According to a police news release, when local police officers and community staff were doing a routine inspection of rented accommodation - typically to check for suspicious activity - Chen Guosheng, a man in his 40s living in one of the fifth-floor apartments, suddenly pulled out a pistol and fired two shots at around 10:20 am.

Witnesses said police fired shots into the sky after securing the area but the suspect was not cowed.

After confronting the police for about three hours, Chen Guosheng was cornered in a room at about 1:30 pm.

Local residents are evacuated from the building where the shooting took place were evacuated. [Provided to China Daily]

But then began another seven hours of a standoff, at end of which gun shots and explosions were heard.

The denouement came at around 8 pm, when police fired teargas, broke open the door to the room and shot him. Police declared him dead 15 minutes later.

Chen Guosheng's neighbors said the man had mental problems as they frequently heard commotions or loud singing from the apartment.

According to the landlord, Chen, a retired soldier, had lived in the apartment for more than a year. The landlord said he once asked Chen to move out, but was rebuffed.

The landlord said Chen, from Henan province, used to live with his wife, who reportedly left him three weeks ago.

Chen was supposed to be sent for treatment for mental illness before the shooting happened, the landlord added.

There were at least two other versions on how the shootout started earlier in the day:

One is that Chen drew his pistol to resist the attempts of the landlord who sought the help of police to get him to vacate the apartment.

The other, according to neighbor Zhang Chunyan, was that the landlord found a gun in the apartment rented by the man and called the police, which led to the confrontation.

The growing number of people who have mental disorders has posed a threat to public safety in the southern metropolis in recent years.

Some of the injury and homicide cases have been blamed on people with mental illnesses.

Official figures show Guangzhou has more than 46,000 registered mentally-ill patients. Experts, however, estimate the number at 60,000, with fewer than a third receiving regular treatment.

More than 100 million Chinese suffer from various mental illnesses, figures from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed in early 2009.

More than 16 million people suffer from serious mental disorders but a majority of them have not received any medical aid.