Hangzhou's drag-race driving "rich boy" arrested for manslaughter

The drag-racer who killed a pedestrian on May 7 has finally been arrested on charges of vehicular manslaughter, after a week of public outrage that the boy's money might protect him from being charged.

Hu Bing, a 20-year-old university student in Hangzhou, hit and killed 25-year-old Tan Zhuo with his Mitsubishi Evo sports car while he was racing on May 7 with two other friends.

In the ensuing week, netizens became furious that Hu was not immediately arrested and were suspicious that his wealthy family had bought police protection.

According to NetEase (translated by ChinaSmack), the only witnesses the police accepted were Hu's two friends. The site also published a photo of Hu and his friends casually talking with each other after the accident and reported onlookers' opinion that Hu's "attitude was very poor, hitting and killing a person yet treating it as if nothing happened."

Another detail that added to the furor was the police's original report that Hu was driving at 70 kph at the time of the accident, which contradicted with witnesses' reports that Tan flew five meters in the air when he was hit, before falling to the ground. At a press conference three days ago, police spokesperson Zheng Xiansheng apologized for that report and confirmed the car's speed to be 84.1 and 101.2 kilometers per hour at the time of the accident.

On Sunday, prosecutors finally approved the police's application to arrest Hu.

"We were convinced that Hu, who was speeding, had violated traffic rules and was fully responsible for the accident," the procuratorate spokesman told Xinhua.

Drag racing has been considered a problem in China in recent years, as more young men with expensive cars have been experimenting with racing and drifting. Hopefully, this latest arrest is an indication that the police will be taking the dangerous sport seriously, whether or not the ones doing it come from rich families.

Photo from Netease.