Eyewitnesses describe stabbing attack at Shanghai shopping mall

On Monday evening, just 20 minutes before closing time, chaos broke out at Ludu International Shopping Plaza in the Songjiang district in southwest Shanghai.

Police said a 37-year-old man, surnamed Lin, went on a stabbing spree, lunging at strangers as he walked through the maze-like mall, past food outlets and went upstairs to a Wallmart.

He managed to hit 18 people and killed three.

A 28-year-old construction worker identified only as Zheng had just finished eating barbecue with a friend when he saw people “running, hiding and screaming.”

He tells us that he and his friend saw the man with his knives and tried to stop him – running at him and throwing chairs at him to try to slow him down or knock the guns out of his hands.

But Zheng says the man was moving too fast and they lost him as he was going up to the second floor.

“As everything became chaotic, we could only determine where he had gone by hearing people’s screams,” Zheng said, adding, “While the attacker was stabbing people, he was shouting curses in Chinese. »

Zheng said he thought the killer’s route “was definitely planned in advance.”

“I believe he deliberately chose the exits; he must have scouted the area beforehand.

Two young shopkeepers outside the building – who saw police take Lin to the ground – say he walked out of the mall with a knife in each hand. Rather than fleeing the scene of the carnage he had caused, he appeared calm, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.

They told the BBC he behaved as if he was in control of the situation, even when officers arrested him.

Footage shared on social media captured the moment he was then taken away, his jacket spattered with what appeared to be his victims’ blood.

Police say he came to Shanghai to “express his anger… due to a personal economic dispute” and that their investigation is continuing.

But just a day later, when the BBC visited the Ludu International Shopping Plaza, it was as if the carnage had never happened.

There was no prolonged confinement at the crime scene. A little over 12 hours after the deadly attack, the blood had been mopped up and the square was open as usual.

Yet the shock remains.

A young trader, who was deregistered at the time of the attack, says she is now afraid to come to work. “It’s like a movie. You can’t believe there’s something so terrifying right next to you.”

She points out the extra security and police now stationed near her clothing store.

“Look at them,” she says, while admitting that she feels safer in the presence of these agents.

We ask him about his colleagues who were at work and had to run with others screaming in the hallways to stay alive.

“Of course they were terrified. None of them came to work today. They say they don’t dare to come back,” she said.

A young woman who runs a stall selling phone accessories and other small electrical appliances says that if she had delayed closing the store by just ten minutes, she would have found herself in the attackers’ path.

“Later, when I heard about it, I was so scared that I couldn’t sleep. Today I arrived at work, clearly still scared.

She says she feels very lucky but terrified to have been so close to such extreme danger.

The incident is the latest in a series of knife attacks to hit China this year.

There have been discussions about the economic pressures that cause divisions in society, not to excuse horrible acts like this, but to try to explain the seemingly inexplicable.

Then there is the question of mental illness and how it is treated. For many years, stabbing attacks on foreigners have been happening in waves in this country and they appear to be horrible copycat attempts to attract attention.

Regardless, there is something very disturbing in China that has led to these bloody assaults.

This week is supposed to be a time to celebrate what China has become, 75 years after the Communist Party came to power, but a killing spree has marked the start of a 7-day break.

Shocking images of those who were injured, struggling in pain on the ground, were shared on social media.

A woman nursing a stabbed child in her lap could be seen sobbing as she tried to phone for help. His other hand was shaking uncontrollably.

At the time of writing, a family member, who declined to be identified, told the BBC that the two-and-a-half-year-old girl was still in intensive care.

Sharing these images and discussions about the attack are now censored on social media platforms closely controlled by China, although some find ways to talk about the topic using certain expressions to avoid being blocked.

However, in online discussion forums, some still welcome the fact that in this country – unlike, for example, the United States – it is very difficult for ordinary people to obtain weapons, because access to weapons automatic would mean many more deaths in cases like this.

Yet the official move to erase this incident, and others like it, from public discourse reveals how troubling this is for the government.

Managers at Walmart and throughout Ludu Plaza blocked many employees from speaking to us, sometimes even interrupting us mid-interview.

Zheng, for his part, says that when he returned to the mall the next day, he couldn’t believe that everything was just “cleaned up” — no flowers. Nothing that marks the attack.

“I can only feel sadness for the victims,” he said.