Chinese teacher gets life for hiring students to murder her love rival
Zhang Xuejing's accomplice drove his car into the wrong woman, leaving his victim in a coma
A jilted teacher is serving a life sentence after hiring five former students to murder her ex-partner's lover, Chinese media reported today.
But an accomplice drove his car into the wrong woman, who has been in a coma since the accident two years ago. Doctors have said it would take a miracle for the victim to recover.
Zhang Xuejing from Qingdao, in northern Shandong province, originally told her former student to cause her pregnant rival to miscarry but make it look like an accident.
When that plan failed, because the woman had left the mainland to give birth, she told him: "Let's find someone to make her disappear from this world."
This week the Guangdong higher people's court ruled that Zhang and Hu Wenqiang, who drove the car, should serve life in prison.
The Guangzhou Daily reported that Shi Chunlong, 20, who organised the incident, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Hou Bin, who pulled out of the attack after helping to plan it, will serve 12 years. Two others will serve nine and three years in jail.
They were convicted by a lower court in May.
Zhang, 40, taught at a vocational school in Qingdao and had been in a long-term relationship with a man who moved to Shenzhen in southern China. When he broke off their relationship she discovered he was living with another woman.
Zhang paid Shi a reported 30,000 yuan (£2,800) to kill her rival and promised each man a 50,000 yuan "hard work fee" after the murder, according to newspaper reports.
It said she wanted the men to drug and drown the woman, later deciding it would be better to run her over.
But Hu knocked down a cleaner, Wang Surong, instead.
The court raised the compensation due to the victim to 1.36m yuan. But Wang's husband said the family would still struggle to pay hospital bills.
"I will never give her up, but I don't have much hope that she will recover," he said, adding that there was no longer any sign she was responding to his presence as she had initially.
"I don't care how many years Zhang is sentenced to; I just want to know when the compensation money will arrive so I can pay the medical fees."
He said the 1.3m yuan would barely cover the family's medical costs and he did not know what they could do next. Their two daughters have dropped out of school following the accident.
Zhang told a journalist: "People who are innocent were hurt because of my impulsiveness. I regret it a lot.
"I am willing to take the consequences. If one day I can get out of prison, I will do whatever I can to help the family of [the victim]."
Her ex-partner told a newspaper: "She was always a bit crazy."
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