A Chinese man who killed 35 people in a car rampage has been executed, according to state media.
Fan Weiqiu, 62, was upset about his divorce settlement and deliberately drove a small SUV through crowds of people exercising outside a sports complex in the southern city of Zhuhai in November.
He killed 35 and wounded 43, in China’s deadliest attack since 2014.
A court in the city “executed Fan Weiqiu in accordance with the execution order issued by the Supreme People’s Court”, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Fan was detained at the scene with self-inflicted knife wounds and fell into a coma, police said at the time.
Footage of the aftermath showed dozens of people lying motionless on running tracks and fields, with shoes and items of clothing scattered across the grounds.
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Many of the injured appeared to be wearing sports outfits. Most were middle-aged, although teenagers and children were also among the casualties, Caixin, a Chinese media outlet reported.
Cries of “terrorist” could be heard as ambulances arrived at the scene.
According to a preliminary investigation, Fan was dissatisfied with the split of financial assets in his divorce, police said.
He was sentenced to death last month, with a court saying his motives “were extremely vile, the nature of the crime extremely egregious, the methods particularly cruel, and the consequences particularly severe, posing significant harm to society”.
CCTV said on Monday that Zhuhai’s public prosecutor “sent personnel to supervise [the execution] in accordance with the law”.
Violent crime is rare in China because of tight security and strict gun laws. However, a rise in reports of knife attacks in large cities has drawn public attention to safety in public spaces.
Last October, a knife attack in Beijing left five people wounded outside one of the city’s top primary schools. A month earlier, a Japanese student was fatally stabbed outside his school in Shenzhen.
