Sichuan school boy jumps 30th floor to death 'on teacher's orders'

Police are investigating claims that a 10-year-old boy jumped to his death in southwestern Sichuan Province after a teacher told him to do so if he didn’t finish a punishment exercise.

The boy from Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital, was told to write a 1,000-character apology for talking in class, China National Radio reported.

Relatives and web users said the boy plunged 30 floors from the block at around 6pm on Wednesday because he was unable to complete the task.

A note was found written on one of the boy’s school books, CNR said. It read: “Teacher, I can’t do it” and “I flinched several times when I tried to jump from the building.”

A local named Jiang Yi yesterday said on his Weibo microblog account that the boy was Li Shichuang, a fifth-grader at Huangrun Primary School.

"He was physically punished and told to write a 1,000-word self-criticism essay for chatting during a reading contest. He was told to jump if he couldn’t accomplish it,” claimed Jiang.
The child struck a parked car beneath the flat where his family live, the West China City News reported.

Furious relatives posted a banner outside his school reading, “A teacher forced our kid to jump off a building,” pictures showed yesterday.

"A police investigation is under way,” said an official in Jinjiang District, where the incident happened.

Yesterday, the school said on its microblog account, that the boy and his classmates were ordered to write reviews of their behavior after disturbing a class contest.

The statement said he died “by accident,” and that “all staff and students are filled with deep sorrow.”
The teacher, whose identity was not disclosed, has made no comment.

The boy’s stepmother, surnamed Wang, said the class teacher phoned her at around 5:40pm on Wednesday to say her stepson had been misbehaving, www.scol.com.cn, reported.

The teacher said the boy had been told off in private and given the choice of standing for an hour or writing a 1,000-character statement.

But the boy cried and asked what if he couldn’t finish such a long statement, Wang said the teacher told her.

Wang promised to talk to her stepson when he returned home. However, when she arrived home she was confronted with the news that the boy was dead, the report said.

Wang said her stepson had studied well at school, was class monitor and had won an English competition.