Police arrest woman who killed 2 kindergarten students with poisoned pizza rolls
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 10 April, 2014, 6:17pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 10 April, 2014, 6:17pm
Alice Yan [email protected]
Children pray before getting a snack at a kindergarten in China. Education authorities have stepped up inspections on nursery schools after a string of safety scandals. Photo: The Beijing News
A woman who fed kindergarteners poison-laced snacks, leaving two children dead, has been detained by police in Yunnan province.
Zhao Jianzhi, 44, confessed to police in Qiubei county that she deposited a small bag of Pizza Rolls, tainted with rat poison, into a classroom of napping four- to five-year-olds at Jiajia Kindergarten on March 19.
When the children woke up, they saw the snacks and ate them. Two of them later died in hospital.
It was unclear how many children got sick but survived the ordeal.
Zhao said it was revenge for when the school took over her apartment’s lease and she was forced to leave. The kindergarten had been operating without official certification since the start of last year.
The school’s owner was in police custody when the poisonings happened.
The case is the latest safety scandal involving kindergarten students in recent weeks.
Last month, some 10 preschools in Shaanxi, Jilin and Hubei provinces were accused of giving prescription drugs to children without their parents’ consent, in order to ensure high attendance rates – a prerequisite to charging high tuition fees.
Angry parents are calling on the authorities to step up supervision. The National Health and Family Planning Commission has launched an inspection of mainland kindergartens and vowed to publish the results soon.
The education authority is conducting an inspection on the qualifications of all private schools and nurseries nationwide.
