Relative of U.S. coach killed in Beijing attack

Interpol said initial investigations found nothing indicating the murder was linked to terrorism or organized crime.

“So far, our database check and preliminary analysis suggest that today’s murder-suicide was an isolated, though brutal, murder of one person and assault on two others,” said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble.

An initial investigation showed that Tang had no fixed residence or job in Hangzhou when he came to Beijing on Aug. 1, a spokesman with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau told Xinhua. Zhejiang police told the official state-run agency that Tang had worked for a meter factory in Hangzhou, but had resigned.

He and his wife divorced in 2006. He sold his apartment the same year and had lived in a rented house ever since.

“Tang has no criminal record. His neighbors said they hadn’t seen any abnormal behavior from him,” a spokesman with the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Bureau said. His name was not used, as is customary.

The spokesman said Tang was not a petitioner — disgruntled workers who travel to the Chinese capital seeking redress for various grievances — or at least had not submitted any complaint to government officials.

But a Hong Kong human rights group said Tang had tried to file a grievance with the central government, though the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy didn’t know what those complaints were about.

Attack appears to be senseless act of violence
He vacated his rented house on Aug. 1, saying he planned to move elsewhere to do business, the public security bureau spokesman told Xinhua, but Tang didn’t specify where he would go or what business he intended to do.

Tang has a 21-year-old son who was once sentenced to six months in prison for theft, the spokesman said, adding that authorities were looking for Tang’s ex-wife and other family members to determine his motivation.

U.S. Ambassador Clark T. Randt visited the victims in hospital, and the embassy issued a statement later that said the attack “appears to be a senseless act of violence.”

“We don’t believe this was targeted at American citizens, and we don’t believe this has anything to do with the Olympics,” embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said.

Attacks on foreigners in China are extremely rare. A Canadian model was murdered last month in Shanghai — police said she stumbled onto a burglary. In March, a screaming, bomb-strapped hostage-taker who commandeered a bus with 10 Australians aboard in the popular tourist city of Xi’an was shot dead by a police sniper.

Shanghai and Beijing are still safer than most cities of their size.

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