A Beijing man was sentenced to death on Wednesday after he threw a toddler to the ground, killing the child.
The assailant, 39-year-old Han Lei, ran from the scene of the incident, but was found by police the next day. The 2-year-old girl sustained serious injuries and passed away in a hospital a few days after the attack, the Associated Press reported.
The incident occurred July 23 in a southern district of Beijing, when the toddler and her mother were standing at a bus stop, the Beijing court stated in a release on its microblog. The court said that Han was in his car looking for a parking spot when he yelled at the mother, saying that the carriage holding the child was in his way. He then got out of his car, beat the mother to the ground and turned on the toddler. He picked up the girl in her carriage, raised it above his head, and threw the toddler onto the pavement.
Han told the court that he thought he was throwing a shopping cart to the ground.
"At that time I didn't know it was a baby carriage," Han said, according to XinHua news. "I thought because the woman had just been shopping that it was a shopping cart."
Han's lawyer said that the attacker didn't mean to kill the young girl, but the court still convicted the 39-year-old man of intentional homicide and sentenced him to death. A second man named Li Ming, who drove Han away from the scene, turned himself in to law enforcement officials two days after the attack, and has been charged with harboring a criminal. He received a five year prison sentence.
Han was incarcerated less than a year ago for another crime, XinHua reported.
The Supreme People's Court will review Han's death sentence, per Chinese law.
