A 41 year-old man in Henan’s Pingdingshan City has received the death sentence for murdering eight of his neighbors in May following a dispute over the positioning of a mirror.
According to Xinhua, Li Lingtao used an iron bar, an axe and a cleaver to kill his eight neighbors, of which three were children. Li suspected that his neighbors, who lived on the opposite side of the street, were attempting to disturb his feng shui by placing a mirror on their gate. Li admitted this was the reason for the murders during an open trial held Thursday.
The tragedy is not the first in a line of violent deaths this year arising from absurdly trivial disputes. In June, a woman was brutally beaten to death in a McDonalds after refusing to give a man her number. A former policeman in Guanxi received the death sentence in April for fatally shooting a pregnant woman who would not serve him milk tea.
Giulia Sciota