Aunt suspected of gouging out six-year-old’s eyes

Chinese authorities suspect the woman who gouged out a six-year-old boy’s eyes was his aunt who later took her own life, state media said, adding a surprising twist to a gruesome case with conflicting details.

Police in the city of Linfen in northern Shanxi province have identified the boy’s aunt Zhang Huiying as a suspect because the boy’s blood was found on her clothes, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Six days after the boy was attacked, Zhang took her own life.

Initial reports said the boy, Guo Bin, was lured by an unidentified woman with a strange accent into a field on Aug 24 where she used an unspecified tool to gouge out his eyes.

Xinhua did not cite a possible motive for the aunt to attack the boy. The police finding seemed to conflict with the family’s initial comments on the boy’s assailant, which cited him as saying that the woman spoke with an accent from outside the area and had hair that was dyed blonde.

The boy’s mother said the boy was disoriented after the traumatising attack.

“It is easy to understand that he wasn’t clear about the situation,” Wang Wenli said. “He said the accent was from another region, but he later amended that. He then said it was a local accent, but he did not say that it was his aunt.”

A police officer in Fenxi referred only to the Xinhua report and refused to answer further questions, saying he was not authorised to speak to the media. Calls to the city and county’s police bureaus’ propaganda departments were unanswered.

State media previously had raised the possibility that the boy’s corneas were taken for sale because of a donor shortage in China, but police said the boy’s eyeballs were found at the scene, and that the corneas hadn’t been removed. At the time, Guo’s father said the family had not actually seen the eyeballs.

Media reports cited police as saying the aunt had argued with the boy’s parents over how much money each family should contribute to the care of his grandfather, who was paralysed.

But the boy’s mother said reports of a dispute were false. “There was no dispute between us and the aunt. I have heard that someone said we had a dispute over taking care of the grand-father, but that is just a lie.”