Killer in China School Stabbing Knew His Victims

BEIJING — The mystery over a series of vicious attacks on schoolchildren across China deepened Thursday, as reports emerged indicating that the latest and deadliest round of slaughter was committed not by a stranger to his victims, but rather by a man well known to them and their families, someone probably seen near the school almost every day.

Meanwhile, in Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang Province, police officers detained a woman on Thursday morning after she stormed into a youth center brandishing a rusty knife, according to a worker at the center and photographs posted by a local newspaper. (By Thursday night, the photographs and an accompanying article had been removed from the newspaper’s Web site, possibly in keeping with government pressure to mute coverage.)

The officers stopped the woman before she harmed anyone, and it was unclear what she had intended to do, the worker said in a telephone interview. The previous five attacks on schoolchildren were all committed by men.

The assailant in the Wednesday attack, Wu Huanming, 48, was the landlord of the Shengshui Temple private kindergarten and had been having frequent disputes with the school administrator, Wu Hongying, over when the school would move out of the building, Chinese news organizations said in early reports. So far, there are no suggestions that the two were related.

Mr. Wu barged into the school with a kitchen cleaver on Wednesday morning and hacked and killed Ms. Wu and a student, then wounded 18 other people, including Ms. Wu’s 80-year-old mother. She and six pupils died of their injuries. Mr. Wu killed himself at his home.

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