CHANGSHA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The teacher who killed an 11-year-old girl in class in central China has been diagnosed as mentally ill and will face no criminal charges, local public security sources said.

Li Hengyi, a 29-year-old teacher at No. 12 Middle School in Yongzhou City in Hunan, was confirmed to be a schizophrenic by a judicial assessment center at Hunan Neurological Hospital, said a spokesman with the Lengshuitan branch of Yongzhou Public Security Bureau.

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that can cause the sufferer to act irrationally.

Li kicked and hit Zhang Yaoyi with a steel bar during class on Sept. 20. He then threw the girl out of a fourth-floor window to her death.

Li will be exempted from criminal charges because of his mental status. He will be committed to a local mental hospital for treatment, the spokesman said.

The school principal Huang Yonghui recognized that Li was suffering from mental illness.

Zhang's family has received 200,000 yuan (25,000 U.S. dollars) as compensation from the school.

Li, born in 1977, began to work as a teacher in No.12 school in1998. A bachelor, he is reputed to be unsociable.

Li began to show signs of mental disorder in 2001 and was treated for about two months in late 2003, according to the judicial assessment center.

A long history of solitude and mental pressure may have led to his mental disorder, according to one of his former colleagues at the school. Enditem