A Chinese teenager arrested for allegedly hiring the hitmen who killed his father and sister wanted to free himself from family-induced stress over his studies, police have said.
The high school student from the central province of Henan found hired killers on the Internet and ordered them to murder his 49-year-old father Gao Tianfeng – a member of the judicial committee of the Intermediate People’s Court of Zhoukou City – and his 20-year-old sister as revenge for putting too much pressure on him to study, reports the official Xinhua News Agency.
Police said two of the three suspects had been detained, including the teenager, after neighbors heard sounds at the family’s residence. The two men were captured on surveillance cameras climbing over the wall and entering the boy’s house early Sunday.
The incident is the third involving students in China under pressure to perform well in their studies recently, South China Morning Post reports. Earlier this month, two teenagers in eastern China killed themselves after “failing to complete homework assignments”.
Educational stress is commonplace in China. Students typically spend 12 hours in the classroom each day while parents are known for pushing their children, sometimes too far, into studying to pass highly-competitive exams.