A man has been found out to have murdered his own parents in cold blood and then proceeded to commit even more grievous crimes to cover up the deed.
File photo used only for illustrative purpose
Yang Qingpei, a young Chinese man, is being questioned for his criminal actions.
The twenty-eight-year-old man has admitted to killing 19 people. This is including his own parents and three children.
According to Agence France Presse, AFP, the man made the confession when he went on trial in southwest China on Wednesday, a court said.
After returning to his home village in Yunnan province on September 28 last year, Yang Qingpei murdered his parents when they refused to give him money, the Qujing City Intermediate People’s Court said on its official microblog account.
Fearing he would be discovered, Yang then killed 17 of his neighbours and fled to Yunnan’s provincial capital Kunming, it said, adding that the murder weapon was a pickaxe.
Yang, who was born in 1989, pleaded guilty to all charges and apologised to the relatives of the dead, it added.
The court adjourned Wednesday afternoon for sentencing.
While mass killings are rare, violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded rapidly.
Studies have also described a rise in the prevalence of mental disorders, some of them linked to stress, as the pace of life becomes faster and support systems wither.