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German family hacked to death in China

SHANGHAI: A German business executive, his wife and two children were hacked to death by burglars who broke into their home in the Chinese city of Nanjing, police and media reports said on Monday.

The bodies of 51-year-old Jurgen Pfrang, who was with German automaker Daimler Benz AG, and his family were found in a pool of blood on the second floor of their villa in the outskirts of the eastern city, police said.

A police spokesman identified the children as a 12-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl. The mother was 39.

The whole family had been slashed and stabbed repeatedly with long watermelon knives, police said.

Pfrang had apparently tackled the intruders and a trail of blood led up the stairs, the newspaper said.

Four suspects, farmers from a nearby rural community, were immediately arrested and confessed to the killings, the newspaper said.

It was believed to be by far the worst violence against Westerners in China in recent times.

China is regarded as relatively safe for foreign residents and tourists, although crime generally is rising, linked to a vast population of unemployed rural drifters.

A handful of Western businessmen have been killed in the past several years, often in their hotel rooms.

The Jiangnan newspaper said one of the intruders was spotted by security guards clambering out of the house down a drain pipe. Police were called and immediately surrounded the villa. Three other intruders emerged with their hands held high.

The thieves broke into the Pfrang's home after trying unsuccessfully to rob a nearby house, the newspaper said.

A spokeswoman for the German Consulate in Shanghai told Reuters: "The Consul General assumes that this is an isolated case that was only made to conceal burglary. There are no indications at all of other motives.

"The consulate is in very close contact with the local authorities and, of course, with the joint venture in which the German man was working," she said.

Pfrang was deputy general manager of Yaxing Benz Ltd, a joint venture producing buses and bus chassis in the city of Yangzhou.

News of the killings shocked the foreign business community in China.

Jorg-M. Rudolph, chief representative of the German Chamber of Commerce, said it was the first killing of a German executive in China that he knew of.

"It is especially shocking because in China we don't expect this," he said.

"We are kept apart from the real world in China."

"It's a tragedy - a whole family killed," he added.

Many foreigners live apart from Chinese in residential compounds surrounded by high walls and guarded night and day by uniformed guards. In some compounds, maids and cooks must carry identity cards to enter.

"We have never felt unsafe. This is a shock. Nobody has expected it," said Steve Barru, president of the Nanjing International Business Association.

In 1998, a U.S. engineer working at a Duracell battery factory in southern China was murdered in a hotel. Three Chinese were executed for the killing.

That same year, a British engineer working for soap maker Cussons was found suffocated in his apartment in the eastern city of Qingdao.-Reuters