Cheng Zhengping

Case record: Cheng Zhengping

Cheng Zhengping was executed on October 13, 2002.

The offence

Cheng Zhengping confessed to spiking a rival trader’s breakfast snacks with rat poison at his competitor’s store. People ate poisoned bread, cakes and rice balls at a fast food shop in Tangshan town in the city of Nanjing and fell ill. The fatalities included schoolchildren and other victims.

State media said he had used powerful rat poison to lace the food at his competitor’s store. Many of the victims died after eating breakfast snacks such as dough sticks and rice balls from the tiny fast-food outlet, described as a branch of the Heshengyuan Soy Milk chain on Tangshan’s main street.

Investigation

Local hospitals were swamped by victims. Investigators sealed off an alley near the restaurant, where its food was cooked at a stall. Witnesses described people beginning to spit blood and then collapsing after taking just a few mouthfuls of the snacks.

The deaths in Tangshan began on Saturday morning, when hundreds of people collapsed after eating breakfast food from the same restaurant in the small town of Tangshan in Jiangsu province.

Officials refused to say exactly how many died, while some estimates put the number at more than 100. Initial reports in state-controlled media had said 41 people had died, including schoolchildren, but other estimates had put the figure higher.

Arrest

Police arrested Cheng Zhengping at Shangqiu, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) north-west of Nanjing as he was attempting to flee by train.

Trial

The Higher People’s Court of Jiangsu province upheld a previous death sentence meted out late last month. The court said: “The facts are clear, the evidence is reliable and ample, and the punishment is suitable,” the court said.

State media said on Monday that Cheng Zhengping had confessed to his crime.

Outcome

Cheng Zhengping was put to death after the Higher People’s Court of Jiangsu province upheld the previous death sentence.

Aftermath

The BBC’s Damian Grammaticas in Beijing said initial reports appeared to have been censored, with references to the number of casualties removed. The Communist Party’s major national congress was due to begin in just a few weeks, and correspondents said authorities were highly sensitive about bad news ahead of it.

Additional poisonings were mentioned as context: in August 2001, 120 people fell ill in a restaurant in Ningxiang, Hunan Province, after being poisoned by the owners of a noodle factory. There were also cases of poisoning in schools in recent years, including in Hunan in which 92 primary schoolchildren were stricken by poison in their lunch.

Other details

Witnesses included Peng Yongqing, who owned a store next to the outlet. He told Reuters news agency: “It happened right there in front of my store,” he told Reuters news agency. “One minute he was sitting there eating and the next he stood up and keeled over. We all thought he was choking, we had no idea what was wrong.”

Peng Yongqing said the elderly man he saw had died on the way to hospital.

Many victims were described as boarding school students at the Zuochang Middle School, which bought breakfast from the shop each day. Migrant construction workers were also among those affected.

A provincial government official quoted by the China Daily newspaper said the poison could have been put in the food on purpose.