A gang of boys aged between nine and thirteen years have beaten their classmate aged 8-year-old to death
Zhang Tai died Friday after enduring incessant bullying from classmates with whom he attended the local school at Zhangjiakou in north-west China’s Hebei province.
The boys who killed him confessed to killing him saying they did it out of boredom.
They reportedly beat him up, before leaving his battered and bruised body lying beside the road.
Tai’s grandfather (with whom he lived), Zhang Kuo, 67, said he had left the young boy playing in the yard, but when he went out later to see him there was no sign of the child.
He said another boy had told him that Tai had gone off with a group of boys because ‘they promised not to beat him any more if he agreed to go with them.’
‘I was instantly worried because I know that one of them is a bully,’ said Kuo.
‘My grandson told me that he had to call the boy “Big Brother” and that whenever he wanted someone to follow him he would either threaten them, or if he couldn’t threaten them would provide them with food from his father’s shop.
Tai’s father Zhang Han, who works as a bricklayer, said his son had often been the victim of local bullies.
‘I have to go to the local town to work so my son is being raised here by my grandfather, and without parents he was often the victim of local bullies,’ said the 42-year-old.
‘He told me that the pocket money I gave him was often stolen by local boys and he didn’t like going to school because he was picked on. But I never realised things had got this bad.’