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BMW driver detained after running over 3-year-old child
Updated: 2010-09-14 11:44
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A 3-year-old boy in Xinyi of Xuzhou in East China's Jiangsu province died under the wheels of a BMW, which ran over the boy four times in less than 30 seconds.
The BMW driver surnamed Wu has been detained for further investigation while the incident triggered an uproar among netizens.
The incident happened around 11 am on Sept 7 when the boy Le Le (not his real name) was playing behind a BMW X6 car in a residential community, the Nanjing-based Yangtze Evening News reported on Monday.
The driver drove the car backwards without looking behind the car and knocked down the boy, the report said.
"My son was run over four times," the boy's father surnamed Li was quoted as saying while crying and watching the surveillance video that happened to catch the entire accident.
The video shows the upper half of the boy's body was hit by the car, knocking him down. The boy was on the ground, kicking his legs. The car stopped for a moment. Then 12 seconds later, the car ran over the boy's body for the first time with its left rear wheel. The driver drove ahead, so the boy was run over a second time. A few seconds later, the driver stopped the car and got out, but the empty car continued to roll backwards and its left rear wheel ran over the boy for the third time before the car's left front wheel ran over the boy for the fourth time.
Then, the driver saw the boy, who was lying in a pool of blood, and left the accident site without taking any rescue measures.
"The driver killed my son intentionally," Li was quoted by Yangtze Evening News as having said.
The BMW car was equipped with both rear-view mirrors and a radar that sounds a warning when the car, driving in reverse, nears an object.
An official at the publicity department of Xinyi Public Security Bureau, who declined to be identified, told China Daily on Monday that the BMW driver has been taken into custody.
"The only thing I can tell you is that the driver has been detained, and the real cause of the accident remains unclear," he said. "The investigation is still being carried out by the police."
（中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑）
About the broadcaster:
Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.
