Scrap collector drowns in moat after being chased by community wardens

BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The daughter of a Henan scrap collector, who drowned in a Beijing moat in August after being chased by local community wardens, is seeking the truth about her father's death.

Wang Ruihuan, a Beijing Forestry University third-year student, has already appealed to the Beijing Fengtai Procuratorate for further investigation into the case.

Wang Fendui, a father-of-three from Yuhuangmiao Village in central China's Henan Province, collected scraps, garbage and other waste to support his daughter's college study in Beijing.

In the early morning of Aug. 4, Wang went with three other collectors, all his countrymen, to a railway under construction in Zuo'anmen in southeast Beijing to get iron and steel materials they believed had been discarded by a construction company, said the daughter.

They were confronted by nearly ten local community wardens who began to chase them with batons toward a nearby moat. One of them jumped into the water and escaped, while two were captured. Wang, however, disappeared from the sight of his countrymen, and his corpse was found two days later in the moat, his daughter said.

She said the two captured men were taken to Fangcheng Police Station. However, when Wang's wife went to the station to ask for her husband on the night of Aug. 4, the daughter said one of policemen allegedly told her mother: "We don't know. Maybe he drowned. Maybe you will see his corpse floating in the moat a couple of days later."

The story about his death and the possibility of it relating to violence by the community wardens gained growing publicity in Chinese media, after it was first reported by the Beijing-based Jinghua Times on Thursday.

Wang's daughter said she could not find the mobile phone and money she believed her father was carrying that morning when she saw his body.

She said the Fengtai District public security bureau concluded after an autopsy that Wang died a natural death from drowning; there was no need for further investigation. But the bureau refused to show the family the autopsy findings, saying it had been put into bureau records.

"There was a family member present when Wang's body was undergoing an autopsy," said Liu Chunjiang, a Fengtai District Public Security Bureau official. "The body did not have bruises and the autopsy showed no wounds from being beaten or fighting."

Daughter Wang said there was a "spy camera" fixed by the local police along the bank of the moat where her father was chased. But when her family asked the Fengtai Public Security Bureau to see the video tape from that camera, they were told the camera was never used. It was taken down shortly afterwards.

"We do not have right either to fix or to tear down such cameras," said Liu.

He added that there were only four people chasing Wang that morning. They were not community wardens but guards employed by a guard company. Wang and his partners were actually stealing from the construction site of the railway. The two captured men confessed and were released because they did not succeed in stealing.

"If there is solid evidence showing that those community wardens saw Wang jump into the moat and that they did not try to help him, they should take the responsibility," said Wu Hongwei, a lawyer with the Beijing-based Haiming Lawyer's Office who provided the Wangs with free advice and consultation.

"However, there is a dead end in this case because there are no witnesses nor enough evidence to prove this," he added.

The incident comes hot on the heels of Jan. 7 case in central Hubei Province where a general manager of a construction firm who filmed a conflict between local security personnel officers and villagers was beaten to death.

Wang Ruihuan is the youngest daughter of the poverty-stricken family of five. Her admission into the university brought her parents to Beijing in 2005. They lived a basic life and scrounged for scraps around the streets in order to support their daughter.

She also received some help from her university and people around after her father's death. She said her university prioritized her as a recipient of state scholarship.

"I do not seek for financial aid but for the truth about my father's death by telling this story to the media," she said.