Driver who ran over girl gets 30 months

The driver who ran over and killed a 2-year-old girl in Foshan, Guangdong province, in October 2011 was sentenced to 30 months in prison for negligent homicide.

A court found in September that Hu Jun had driven a van over Wang Yue, a girl widely known as Yue Yue, in a hardware market in Foshan. Minutes later, the girl was run over again, that time by a truck.

Video footage showed that at least 18 people passed by the child after the accident without helping her. Seven minutes after Yue Yue had been run over, a 57-year-old rag collector named Chen Xianmei spotted her and found her parents. The girl died in a hospital a week later.

Hu Jun's final sentence was a year shorter than the one he had received when he was convicted, Yangcheng Evening News reported on Wednesday. The report said witnesses, as well as other evidence, suggested that Hu had not been initially aware that he had hit someone. It wasn't until three days after the accident that he turned himself in to the police.

Hu filed an appeal over his initial sentence. He and others involved in the accident eventually reached an agreement with Yue Yue's parents, pledging to pay them 303,000 yuan ($48,647) in compensation. The parents later said they understood Hu.

The court that heard Hu's appeal, the Foshan Intermediate People's Court, decided the agreement constituted grounds for reducing Hu's criminal responsibility.

Yue Yue's case gave rise to heated discussions across the country, prompting commentators and the public to discuss morality in modern society.

Yue Yue's death, although extremely sad, has had some good effects, said Tan Fang, a professor with the South China Normal University in Guangzhou.

The government and public were quick to criticize the indifference shown by those who passed by the injured girl without trying to help her. And there have been institutional changes, he said.

The city of Guangzhou, for example, has made significant strides in ensuring that good Samaritans are rewarded for their deeds.

And more people have started to think about the responsibilities they have as citizens and about the importance of living up to moral standards. As a result, good Samaritans have become far more common.

Tan founded a website about good Samaritans in China in 2008 and started writing a column about Yue Yue's case to guide the public's reflections about her death.

Many people have since called for a strengthening of the system used to protect those who offer assistance to others who are in danger, noting that rescuers have been accused of causing accidents in several cases and sued.

Liang Yu contributed to this story.