Fri, December 10, 2010
Police in an eastern China city said Wednesday that their microblog helped them catch the murderers of a three-year-old girl.
The murder is the first publicly reported one to be solved with the help of microbloggers.
The girl's parents have confessed to murdering their daughter and then dumping the body in the sea off Xiamen, said Lu Zhicheng, spokesman for the Public Security Bureau of Xiamen, Fujian Province.
Photos of police arresting the couple on the official microblog of Xiamen police - t.sina. com/xmpolice - continues to attract comments. The faces of the couple were blacked out in the photos.
A 5,000-yuan ($750) reward was offered for information to help identify the body. The photo was transmitted to more than 10,000 microbloggers and drew over 2,000 comments.
The police received about 100 pieces of information from microbloggers that helped them track down her parents in neighboring Jiangxi Province.
"An Internet user recognized the child and helped us connect with her grandfather, who told us the whereabouts of the girl's parents," said police officer Liu Dongqiang.
The parents did not report the child missing, Liu added.
Liu and his colleagues worked day and night to communicate with the microbloggers. "The power of the police is limited but the power of the people knows no bounds."
Microblogs have become popular with local public security bureaus. The first official police microblog was launched by police in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, on February 25.
