After an eight-year manhunt across four provinces involving tens of
thousands of police officers,
's most-wanted criminal was shot dead
yesterday, 14 kilometres from his mother's home.
Zhou Kehua, 42, was cornered in an alley behind a shoe shop
in the central city of
and opened fire. He was shot in the
head at close range. At least one policeman was "lightly injured" in the
gun battle.
Zhou had been on the run since 2004, evading capture despite being the target of one of the largest manhunts mounted in China.
By the end, the combined value of all the rewards placed on
his head had risen to 5.4 million yuan ($AU800,000) and wanted posters
had been pinned up as far afield as Shanghai, more than 1600 kilometres
from his home.
Gun crime is extremely rare in China, where firearms are strictly
controlled, but Zhou had killed a total of nine people, including one
policeman, in a series of armed robberies.
He went for bank customers withdrawing large sums of cash,
following his victims and shooting them in the head before making a
swift getaway.
"He remained very calm after the murders and would decide the
quickest way to escape," said Pi Yijun, a criminologist at
China
University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. "He would do his
homework by staying at a bank and observing its customers, working out
the best place to strike. After so many murders, he knew he would get
the death penalty, so there was no moral struggle in his mind."
Zhou would lie low for long periods, disappearing at one stage for more than four years, between 2005 and 2009.
He resurfaced last Friday for the first time since January,
killing a woman outside a branch of the Bank of China in
Shapingba, a
district of Chongqing.
The local authorities quickly mounted an enormous manhunt,
calling back all police on leave and mobilising the local army. However,
after combing Gele Mountain, only a ragged green T-shirt and two
cigarette cartons were found.
China Central Television (CCTV) said it
was thought that the manhunt, which was widely publicised in the media,
had been a ruse to give Zhou a false sense of security.
In fact, he had been spotted in a department store in
Chongqing on August 11, leading police to believe he had remained close
to the scene of his last crime, rather than retreating to his mountain
hideout.
Quietly, four-man teams of plain-clothes police moved through
the city to track him down. Eventually a resident in Tongjiaqiao, near
his mother's home, reported him to the police yesterday morning,
collecting a 600,000 yuan reward. Zhou's father died last August, but
his mother lives in a three-storey house and has been under constant
surveillance since January.
His ex-wife lives in a neighbouring town with their
13-year-old son. Zhou is thought to have visited them at the beginning
of the year after committing a murder and stealing 200,000 yuan in
Nanjing.
Two
Chinese newspapers disputed the account of Zhou's final moments.
The Chongqing Times said he had committed suicide and the police had merely found his body.
The Changsha Evening News, however, said that he had turned the gun on himself after being shot twice by police.
The Telegraph,
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