Court imposes death penalty on child abductor

Yu Huaying, a woman who abducted and trafficked 11 children in the 1990s for financial gain, was sentenced to death by a court in Guizhou province on Monday.

Yu, a native of Yunan province, was found to have sought illicit benefits by abducting and trafficking the children from Chongqing and Guizhou to Hebei province between 1993 and 1996. Yu's behavior constituted the crime of child abduction, said the Guiyang Intermediate People's Court.

The court said that Yu carried out the abductions with a man surnamed Gong, who died during the course of the case. Two other people, surnamed Wang and Yang who participated in the abductions, have been dealt with in separate cases, the court added.

Considering the large number of children Yu abducted and the fact that her offenses were extremely serious and had a great negative effect on society, the court said that it decided to impose the death penalty on her.

It also stripped Yu of her political rights for life and ordered that all her personal assets be confiscated.

Yu said she will appeal the decision to a higher court.

The case aroused public attention in June 2022 after police in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou, received a report from a woman who had been abducted 27 years earlier. Yang Niuhua, 33, was snatched by Yu in Guizhou and taken to Hebei in 1995 for the sum of 2,500 yuan ($343).

Over the years, Yang, a native of Guiyang, never stopped searching for her family. In April 2021, thanks to a video she posted on the video-sharing platform via Douyin, she had a successful DNA match and reunited with her family a month later.

In June 2022, after she returned to her hometown, Yang went to Guiyang police to provide clues about her abduction. Yu was soon captured in Chongqing.

She was prosecuted in February and the court heard her case in July.

In 2000, Yu was arrested by police in Handan, Hebei, and served a two-month detention in relation to child abduction offenses, according to ThePaper, a Shanghai-based news outlet.

In 2004, she was captured by authorities again for abducting children in Yunnan. At that time, she was using a fake identity. She was sentenced under the false ID to eight years in prison for child abduction, it said.

While serving the prison term, her sentence was reduced by three years. After her release she was jobless, ThePaper reported.