Assailant in Beijing hotel attack footage arrested

A man was arrested for alleged assault and attempted kidnapping in a hotel in Beijing after an online video clip sparked widespread anger.

The arrest was announced by the Beijing Public Security Bureau (BPSB) on Friday.

The man, surnamed Li, is 24 years old, according to sources with the BPSB. He was caught at about 9 p.m. Thursday in Xuchang City in central China's Henan Province, which is about 760 kilometers from Beijing.

The footage began circulating online after a Weibo user nicknamed "Wanwan" posted it on her account on Tuesday. It was apparently shot by a surveillance camera at about 10:50 p.m. on Sunday.

In the footage, a man in a black leather coat and jeans throttled a woman and tried to pull her away in the hallway of an Yitel hotel in east Beijing's Chaoyang District.

Wanwan said on her account that the assault lasted for five to six minutes. A hotel staff member was seen watching her struggle without intervening, although the woman shouted "Help!" and "I do not know him."

She attempted to escape into the elevator, but failed and was dragged to the stairway. The violence came to an end eventually after a female passerby helped her.

"There were people watching, but they didn't save me," Wanwan said. "The atrocity lasted for five or six minutes in a place with security cameras, but no security guard or managerial staff came to my rescue."

"If I hadn't been rescued, where would he have taken me?" she asked. "If I had been looking for my key outside my room, would I have been pushed into the room and raped, and ultimately forced into prostitution?"

The footage has been viewed more than 6.7 million times since it was uploaded.

"It is shocking and sad that in a society under the rule of law, the suspect could be so savage," a web user nicknamed Meimeiwangbudiaoni said.

"My colleagues and I have membership cards for the hotel chain, and we are mostly women. If the hotel does not give people a satisfactory reply, we will stop booking this hotel," said another.

Yitel is a high-end chain under the Homeinns group, which had close to 3,000 hotels in 345 cities in China as of last December, according to its official website.

Homeinns posted a statement on Tuesday, admitting that there were "problems in security management and customer service during the incident." "We hereby sincerely apologize to the victim and the general public," it said, pledging improvement.

The hotel where the incident happened has stopped operations and been removed from several online booking platforms in China, such as Ctrip and Elong.

An unnamed official with the Chaoyang District tourism authority was quoted by the Beijing Times as saying that the hotel "will definitely be punished."

"It will be warned for not reporting the event in a timely manner," he said. "If a police investigation reveals any delinquency, it is likely to receive a stronger punishment such as fines or a reduced rating.

While demanding a thorough investigation and release of the results, some angry netizens also criticized the indifference of bystanders.

"Would it have been fair to just watch if the assailant and the victim had known each other?" asked "losticy" on Weibo.

"Behind the event is complicated social psychology," said an editorial on the website of China Radio International. "We need people's moral awareness to stop such violence, and also encouragement as well as improved mechanisms from the government. May this event prompt us to think and make changes."

Source: XINHUA