Prosecutors say policeman justified in firing controversial fatal shot
Prosecutors in Heilongjiang Province say that it was legal for a local policeman to shoot a man dead in a recent case, and concluded surveillance footage of the incident was not manipulated before it was released.
Sun Chengyi, chief prosecutor of the Railway Transport Procuratorate in Harbin, said that the prosecution's independent investigation showed that the police officer, Li Lebin, fired his weapon in accordance with the law, The Beijing News reported Sunday.
Sun said that the conclusion, which matches a previous police investigation, was based on evidence including witness testimony, field investigation, security camera footage and a ballistics report.
Xu Chunhe, 54, allegedly stopped other passengers from entering the waiting room and threw his little daughter at Li while trying to snatch Li's gun before he was shot and killed in the Qing'an railway station on May 2.
The Harbin Railway Public Security Bureau conducted a 10-day investigation after the incident and announced that Li had abided by the police code of conduct on May 14.
The investigation found that Xu, who planned to travel to Jinzhou with his 81-year-old mother and three children, blocked about 40 passengers from entering the waiting room. Li was called by the station staff to deal with the situation and he was attacked by Xu.
Video footage released by the authorities showed that Xu repeatedly tried to grab Li's baton, punched Li in the head, pushed his mother to Li and threw his daughter to the floor as a threat.
The case has drawn wide public attention, with some Net users questioning whether the police had used excessive force, and challenging the authenticity of the footage released by local authorities.
Li said in an interview with The Beijing News that what Xu had done was a threat to other passengers and he did not fire a warning shot because he was afraid that the bullet could hurt others.
Xu's mother Quan Yushun said that Xu was drunk and was in a bad mood, according to the People's Daily.
The investigation team from the Harbin Railway Public Security Bureau sent the video footage to a judicial expertise center for digital data in Beijing on Thursday to test its authenticity, according to The Beijing News.
Gao Lei, a research fellow at the judicial expertise center, was quoted by the newspaper as saying the released video footage had not been edited or tampered and it was part of the original video that ran from 8:46 a.m. to 1:16 p.m. on May 2.
Xu, who had a 2,700 yuan ($436) allowance for low-income residents per year, planned to beg in another city with his mother and children, not to petition as some news reports said, according to the People's Daily.
