Mum chops off son's hands in a jealous rage

In an attack straight out of a horror film, a Chinese woman chopped both her eight-year-old son's hands off because she thought her husband was having an affair.

Liang Wei still shudders when he recalls his son's ordeal, and is angry and confused that his wife, Guo Chunmei, has been allowed to walk free.

Liang, 35, from Danxian county, in central China’s Henan province, had been working as a long-distance lorry driver in Zhejiang province, over a thousand miles away.

"I wired half my wages home every month, but to save money I only visited a couple of times a year," he said.

"Then one morning I suddenly got a call at 5am. She told me she'd chopped off Chu Chu's hands."

Liang told his wife not to make silly jokes. They had spoken on the phone the day before, and nothing had seemed amiss.

Her muted reaction, however, disturbed him, and he phoned his father, who lived nearby, and asked him to go and check that everything was all right.

When Liang's father and a neighbour arrived at the house, they were horrified by the sight that greeted them.

"As soon as they opened the door, they were struck by an overpowering stench of blood," said Liang.

"They turned on the light - blood had sprayed everywhere, on the walls, on the furniture, there were even patches on the ceiling."

They entered the bedroom. Chu Chu was lying on the bed, covered with a quilt and moaning incomprehensibly.

As his grandfather dashed across the room to pull back the cover, the boy screamed "Grandad, don't touch the quilt - it hurts too much!"

The two men carefully removed the quilt. Both Chu Chu's hands were missing. Blood oozed from the stumps of his arms, soaking the mattress.

Chu Chu, who the couple adopted as a baby after finding out Guo could not have children, later told police his mother had grabbed him without warning.

Dragging him into the bathroom, she locked the door, held him against the bathtub and chopped off his left hand with a meat cleaver.

Although stunned by the attack, Chu Chu tried to reason with his mother. He pleaded with her to leave him his other hand, so that he could look after her when she grew old.

Guo's only response was to swing her weapon again, slicing off the boy's right hand.

Chu Chu's grandfather called an ambulance, but there was another problem - paramedics couldn't find the boy's hands.

His mother calmly pointed at the open sewer outside the house. Without hesitating, Chu Chu's grandfather jumped into the filth and retrieved the boy's hands.

Despairing local doctors told the paramedics to get Chu Chu to the big Zhoukou Xiehe Hospital, several hours' drive away.

Liang Wei recalled: "The doctors said if his hands were off his body for eight hours, there was no hope. The ambulance got to the hospital six hours after the attack, and it took them another three hours to sterilise his hands as they had been contaminated by human faeces.

In more than 10 hours of surgery, the doctors inserted thick steel wires into Chu Chu’s hands and arms. Somehow, the operation was a success. Chu Chu has his hands back, although they don't work very well and his arms also bear deep scars where Guo sliced them repeatedly with the cleaver.

"She thought I was having affairs," Liang said. "All I was doing so far from home was working very hard to support my family. I can't understand how she could have done such a cruel thing to our son."

There was a further shock in store. In the confusion that followed the attack, Guo's family quickly whisked her away to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.

"They found a community hospital, and got a diagnosis that she was temporarily insane, and cannot be held responsible," said the disgusted Liang.

"I don’t believe this. We've been married for 10 years. She's never shown any sign of mental illness. All our neighbors know she is a healthy and normal woman.

Liang hasn't had the time even to go through the complicated bureaucracy of a divorce, and plans to appeal for another appraisal of Guo's mental state. He is indignant that she has been allowed to return to a normal life.

"She's found a job in Wuhan," he said bitterly. "How can a dangerous mental patient get a job without having been hospitalised or held for any length of time?"

Chu Chu has now had a second operation, and is waiting for a third.

"He can't turn his hands," explained Liang. "The bones have fused together, and he needs another operation."

Meanwhile, Guo remains on the loose, at one point turning up at the hospital, saying she had come to visit her son.

"We were coming down the stairs when we saw her," Liang recalled. "Chu Chu screamed and ran down the corridor. I called the police and asked them what on earth they were doing that they can let her walk around as she pleases. They said there was nothing they could do."

Chu Chu's father is still determined his son will have as normal a life as possible.

"He's a very clever boy," he said. "He's top of his class all the time. Even during his most painful days in hospital, Chu Chu was studying.

"I want him to study computers and get a job that doesn't involve manual work. My dream is that he can recover to an extent that he can take care of himself."