16-year-old gets one year in prison for trying to poison dis

A teenage student in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality has been sentenced to one year in jail after trying to poison fellow students for being too noisy in class, local media reported on Wednesday.

The 16-year-old surnamed Zhou on April 26 poured pesticide into the water dispenser in the classroom, apparently in an act of revenge against classmates who disturbed the class and affected Zhou’s studies, the Chongqing Morning Post said.

No students or teachers drank the poisoned water, the report said.

On April 24, Zhou took the pesticide to the Yimin Technician Training School in Rongchang, Chongqing and hid the toxic substance under a desk.

After Zhou contaminated the water, one of Zhou’s classmates surnamed Tang noticed that the water coming out of the dispenser was milky and had a pungent scent.

Suspecting that the water had been mixed with something harmful, Tang reported the incident to the class monitor and teachers. Students were then asked to move the dispenser to the teachers’ office where teachers then called the police.

After an investigation, Rongchang police arrested Zhou on April 29 for endangering public security, according to the Chongqing Morning Post.

The local court gave Zhou a lenient sentence due to the teenager’s age and frank confession of the crime, according to the report.

In the past two decades, several campus poisoning incidents have sparked mass debates and concerns about students’ psychological development and support.

One of the more notorious incidents was when Zhu Ling, a student at the prestigious Tsinghua University, was paralyzed when her roommate allegedly poisoned her with thallium in 1994.