Society

Teacher secretly buried toddler who choked

By Yan Weijue (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-04-07 13:24

A kindergarten teacher secretly buried a two-year-old pupil who died after choking on food, yunnan.cn reported Thursday.

Liu Zongquan, father of Liu Xiangyun, holds a picture of the toddler who died in a choking incident on March 31, 2011. [Photo/Yunnan.cn]

Tang Chengyan, a disqualified teacher who ran the illegal Zhiduoxing Kindergarten in Yuxi, Southwest China's Yunnan province, admitted to police that she conspired with her colleague to bury Liu Xiangyun to avoid blame for the child's parents.

The 20-month-old toddler choked on food and later died after failed medical efforts at a local hospital on March 31, 2011.

Tang then lied to the toddler's parents that Liu went missing when she took him out shopping in the street. She stuck to the fraud during questioning by police, who began to suspect her words were false after finding no trace of the toddler on street surveillance cameras and discovering bloodstains on the teacher's motorbike the next day.

According to the autopsy results and hospital records, the police ruled out murder and detained Tang and her colleague for a number of days before they were fined for filing a false report.

The kindergarten was illegally run in Yuxi, according to an official with the local education bureau, adding that police had ordered its closure twice, but it kept moving underground.