3 commit suicide, 2 others taken into custody

Three young men committed suicide together in Dongguan, Guangdong province, while two others who also planned to kill themselves with the group but backed out were taken into custody, local police said on Tuesday afternoon.

Three men were found dead in a rented house on Monday. The two men who backed out of the plot were caught fleeing the home by police.

They confessed to having planned to commit suicide with the three other men because of their dissatisfaction with work and their personal lives.

Lawyer Xu Yufa from Guangdong Yuanhao Law Firm told Southern Metropolis Daily that the two men's behavior might constitute conditional intentional homicide because they didn't attempt to rescue the men or report their deaths to police.

The police haven't released what measures they plan to take against the two men.

According to police, the five men are from Shandong, Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong provinces and not all of them were working in Dongguan. An anonymous police source from Southern Metropolis Daily said that the men got to know each other through an online chat group where netizens discuss suicide.