The Scene Feels Familiar — The Next “Yu Menglong” Has Appeared (Image)

There was a nail-sized hole in the left side of the child’s chest (online screenshot).

[People News] Recently, the mysterious death of a 13-year-old middle school student in Xincai County, Henan Province has brought back a hauntingly familiar scene. Just like in the Yu Menglong case, criminal responsibility was swiftly ruled out.

The 13-year-old student, surnamed Zhu, was a seventh-grade student at Jinshi Tsinghua Garden Middle School. In the early morning of January 8, around 5 or 6 a.m., Zhu’s parents were suddenly notified by the school that “the child is not going to make it.”

Upon hearing the devastating news, the parents rushed to the school. However, before they arrived, the school attempted to secretly transport the child’s body away in an ambulance. Relatives hurriedly drove a van to block the ambulance on the road. When the parents finally arrived, they discovered blood stains at the corner of the child’s mouth, a nail-sized hole in the left side of his chest, and large areas of dark purple bruising around the waist, raising suspicions that the cause of death was not simple. Large numbers of local residents repeatedly gathered in front of the school gate demanding justice, while police were deployed to control the situation and confront the protesting crowd.

On January 9, the Xincai County Education Bureau issued a notice stating that Zhu’s death was an accidental death. It said that public security authorities intervened immediately, and after preliminary investigations including an external examination of the body, scene inspection, interviews, video retrieval, and medical history checks, a criminal case had been ruled out.

This announcement lacked details of a forensic autopsy, and the issuing body was not the police. Netizens asked whether this felt familiar. In the Yu Menglong case, Yu’s already-deregistered studio also announced “criminal responsibility ruled out” on behalf of the police. The police notice issued by Beijing’s Chaoyang District regarding the Yu Menglong case was similarly vague, failing to even specify the date or location of the incident.

Another similarity is that the family discovered the child’s personal belongings had already been quickly cleared away, and the school claimed that surveillance equipment was damaged and therefore could not provide relevant video footage.

Netizens questioned: “Another case of broken surveillance! Is the surveillance really broken, or does it just ‘conveniently’ break at critical moments?”

A Xincai parent, Xiao Qi, told New Tang Dynasty Television: “Once the official notice came out, it was like rubbing our intelligence into the ground. They don’t care whether you believe it or not — they just ask whether you submit. This is an industry chain that doesn’t treat ordinary people as human. On the highway, large trucks dumped loads of dirt, completely blocking the road. There were so many armed police at the school gate — more than the parents.”

Another parent at the school, Xiao Cai (pseudonym), said that Tsinghua Garden is a privately run chain school that claims to have forensic personnel stationed on campus and conducted an autopsy without parental consent. He no longer dares to let his child attend school and told his child that life is more important than studying.

A Henan parent, Xiao Liu (pseudonym), was extremely angry: “The family disappears, online videos disappear. Anything posted from Henan — either traffic is restricted or it’s directly taken down, accounts get shut down. We’re treated like weeds. Why speak out at all? The purpose is to let them know that even a blade of grass has a temper. We Henan parents are still paying attention.”

The Zhu student case sparked huge controversy online. On January 11, a joint investigation team in Xincai County released its final findings, confirming that Zhu died of “cardiac sudden death.” The notice stated that the deceased had no conflict with others before death, no external injuries on the body surface, and no signs of poisoning. Regarding the abnormalities observed on the body, officials explained that the needle hole in the left chest was caused by forensic personnel drawing heart blood for toxicological testing, and that the liquid at the corner of the mouth was bodily fluid that naturally overflowed during the turning of the body.

Online, some individuals with medical backgrounds analyzed the cause of the chest hole and believed it resembled a puncture left by cardiac blood sampling.

One netizen commented: “According to regulations, forensic doctors belong to the criminal investigation department. Without police responding to the call and arriving at the scene, forensic doctors cannot act alone. Moreover, the school did not report to the police immediately — the report was made only after the parents arrived. Finally, cardiac puncture does not require a wound the size of a ballpoint pen! Injecting some kind of preservative might. And why were the social media accounts of the family and their lawyers wiped clean?”

Some claims suggest that after the heart stops beating, if it is necessary to maintain organ viability outside the body for subsequent transplantation, preservation solution is usually continuously injected through a needle hole. Combined with circulating claims that the deceased had a rare blood type and had participated in physical examinations, this has led people to suspect that the school’s hurried transfer of the body was motivated by organ harvesting. However, all such discussions have since been taken down from the internet.

If discussion continues and the parents persist in demanding answers, it is likely that Zhu’s case will also become subject to “state control.” Under CCP rule, anyone could become the next “Yu Menglong.”
△