Shanxi county police assign crash blame to deceased rural couple struck by unlit drunk driving cadre
- Wutai County traffic police assigned primary collision liability to a deceased farmer couple riding an electric tricycle struck from behind by a drunk township Party secretary.
- Officers waited 14 hours before administering a blood alcohol test to allow the cadre's blood alcohol concentration to drop below criminal thresholds.
- Illustrates grassroots cadre impunity and systemic manipulation of forensic traffic accident reports.
A drunk official killed a peasant couple, and the police blamed the dead. In Shanxi’s Puxian County, traffic officers ruled that a rural husband and wife bore secondary criminal liability after a speeding township cadre named Du mowed them down as they pushed a handcart along an unlit road, according to investigative reporting by Xin Huanghe syndicated on Sina News. Cadre Du had been driving with no headlights and a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit. Yet investigators concluded the victims should have yielded.
The finding relies on fabricated legal fault to preserve cadre impunity. The incident echoes the infamous 2010 “My father is Li Gang!” scandal, when an official’s son drunkenly killed a university student and expected immunity. Little has changed. Rather than holding party personnel to statutory traffic laws, county public security officers manipulated routine crash liability to shield an inebriated colleague from a prison term.
The ruling demonstrates how subordinated law enforcement operates when the state clashes with ordinary citizens. In provincial China, traffic cops and courts answer directly to the local party committee, not the law. When a cadre commits vehicular homicide, the bureaucracy protects its own. The dead cannot file an appeal.
Outraged comments on Weibo: 'A drunk-driving cadre kills a hard-working rural couple on a scooter, and police rule the victims at fault because their scooter lacked reflective tape?'
Police traffic report screenshots were blocked on Weibo for 'inciting social confrontation'; discussions were relegated to obscure forums.
The cadre's blood alcohol test was delayed by 14 hours by attending officers, a routine delay tactic to protect Party members from mandatory DUI prison sentences.