Outrage of the Day: Chinese car thief murders baby found in backseat
This picture taken on March 5, 2013 shows Changchun citizens gathered together to mourn the death of a two-month-old baby killed by a car thief in Changchun, northeast China’s Jilin province. The thief strangled the baby to death after stealing a vehicle with the infant inside, police said, provoking outrage across the country on March 5, 2013. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
On the morning of March 4th, at the Xihuancheng Lu and Longhua Lu intersection in Changchun, a silver-gray Toyota RAV4 with license plate “A·MM102″ was stolen, with a 2-month-old baby boy unknowingly in the backseat.
After the Changchun city police learned of the incident, over 3500 traffic, patrol, and special police officers began to search the entire city for the automobile.
As time passed and as the news of the missing baby spread, the police-centric search blossomed into an inspiring community-wide effort.
According to ChinaSmack.com, hundreds of cab drivers and ordinary citizens of the freezing northern Chinese province of Jilin, combed the streets and side alleys all day looking for the stolen SUV.
Those who volunteered for the search even put on their hazard lights in an attempt to intimidate the kidnapper/thief into turning himself in.
Changchun media outlets made appeals to owners of other silver-grey RAV4s, requesting that they stay off the road to prevent unnecessary trouble for the kind-hearted masses and police looking for the baby boy.
Despite these heoric efforts, the thief, Zhou Xijun, finally surrendered himself to the authorities on March 5th, whereby he admitted that he had strangled the baby and hurriedly buried him in the snow after stealing the vehicle.
According to the BBC, the official Sina Weibo account of the People's Daily newspaper wrote: "Baby Haobo, sleep well – you are not big enough to experience the first spring yet…… but the person who hurt you will be punished and we will try to the make the world you hardly knew a better place."
Celebrity television host Zhu Dan, who has 5.5 million followers, chimed in as well saying, "Child, we owe you a future."
Thus, it is with heavy hearts that we choose the grisly fate of two-month old Haobo as our outrage of the day.
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