The police started their investigation on the suspicion that the spectators at the 19-yar-old girl’s suicide in Gansu Province prompted her death and hindered the rescue attempt. Several people have been detained so far, but the probe continues, as the local outlet Beijing Times reports.
On June 20, the teenager jumped off the building and died after 4 hours of sitting outside a window on the 8th floor of a local department store.
People in the crowd there were allegedly heard saying "How are you still not jumping?" “If you want to jump, do it quickly,” and “It’s hot to wait for you downstairs for more than an hour, jump quickly,” as the Beijing Times report. When she jumped and hit the ground, the crowd gasped and then reportedly applauded and laughed.
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Some reportedly livestreamed the event, one even used a banner over it saying "1, 2, 3, jump,” according to a blogger on Weibo. Following the suicide, video clips were posted online (WARNING: THE LINKED VIDEO IS GRAPHIC AND MAY OFFEND SENSIBILITIES), triggering an uproar on the Chinese web, according to the local web-site Global Times.
"The onlookers who had fun were the ones who destroyed the last hope in the girl's heart," one of the netizens wrote on the Chinese social media site Weibo, where the shocking video was posted.
So, so, shocking to hear people applauding when the girl jumps to her death. "Girl, I hope you're off to a better world, where people are not so cold and detached." #甘肃 https://t.co/MF4QTsGH1A
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) 24 июня 2018 г.
Many such shocking cases of female sexual abuse/rape and it's cover up keep happening in China…this time it took away the life of a 19 year old Gansu province girl.She committed suicide,while some onlookers were happily cheering her imminent fall and saying "jump already"😔 https://t.co/QCMhu1isG2
— Chinu the friendly dragon 🐉半个中国通 (@NamasteNiHao) 25 июня 2018 г.
It was later revealed that she suffered from depression, after a school teacher allegedly harassed her in 2017, but reportedly had only disciplinary punishment. Before she killed herself this June, she had attempted suicide several times. In her final note she accused her teacher of abuse and asked for justice.
The local outlet Shanghai.ist reports, this hasn’t been the first incident of such kind in China, pointing at a similar incident in Shenyang in 2015. A crowd below had whistled, encouraging a half-naked woman attempting to jump from a 10th-floor window, to do it quicker.
