Residents of a southern Chinese city mourn the 35 people killed in a car ram attack on a sports center

ZHUHAI, China (AP) — People in a southern Chinese city paid respects Wednesday to 35 residents killed by a driver who rammed his vehicle into a sports complex earlier this week mowing down people while they were exercising.

Police have provided little information about the 62-year-old attacker other than to say the man, identified only by his surname Fan, was angry about his divorce settlement and was arrested immediately after the attack as he tried to flee the scene. city ​​of Zhuhai on Monday evening.

The attack, which also seriously injured 43 people, took place on the eve of the Zhuhai Airshow, sponsored by the People’s Liberation Army and held every two years. China often earns extra efforts to tightly control information surrounding major or sensitive events.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Zhuhai residents laid flowers in honor of the victims outside the “Zhuhai People’s Fitness Plaza” in southern Guangdong province. Police presence at the scene was light, although the number of officers increased later in the day. The sports complex was closed until further notice.

The police allowed the public to leave bouquets near the entrance to the sports complex, but volunteers then quickly moved the flowers inside the sports center.

“May there be no villains in heaven,” one of the bouquets read. “Good deeds will be rewarded and bad deeds will be punished.”

Chinese Authorities are also very careful about what is said in public surrounding major catastrophes or violence, where eyewitness accounts are often censored. It took almost 24 hours after the attack before information on the final number of victims was released.

Videos, quickly censored inside China, outside the Great Firewall, posted by Teacher Li, an artist-turned-dissident who has an X account with 1.7 million followers that posts crowdsourced videos about news in China.

Articles from Chinese media featuring interviews with survivors were quickly removed on Monday and Tuesday.

Residents of Zhuhai were still processing news of the attack.

“It’s very shocking,” said one of them, Dong Chilin. “My husband goes jogging there every evening. I called him immediately. … Luckily, none of the people I know were there that day.”

She said her two children asked their father to stay away for the time being.

Another woman, who gave only her surname Guan, said she passed the spot around 8pm on Monday evening but thought it was just a traffic accident. “This was of course very shocking. It was very terrible.”

Police said their preliminary investigation showed Fan was unhappy with his divorce settlement, but provided no further information about his divorce or alleged motive.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for strict punishment under the law in a statement on Tuesday evening.

He also urged all local governments to “strengthen prevention and … avoid extreme cases, and resolve conflicts and disputes in a timely manner,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

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Wu reported from Bangkok. Associated Press senior video producer Wayne Zhang in Zhuhai, China, contributed to this report.