Lu Yuanwei was a 24-year-old father with a daughter less than two years old. His wife was about to give birth any day, and a new little life was about to come into this world. The couple lived with Lu Yuanwei’s parents in Wanji Village, Shiqiao Town, Ningling County, Shangqiu City, Henan Province.
Lu Yuanwei worked at a wood processing factory. He was well-liked at work and sometimes enjoyed having a few drinks with his co-workers after work.
On March 26, 2011, Lu Yuanwei went to work at the factory. The factory was only a few kilometers from his home, and every day Lu Yuanwei rode a motorcycle back and forth.
That evening, after 6 p.m., Lu Yuanwei did not come home for dinner as usual. His family waited until dark but still saw no sign of him. His unusual behavior made the family very worried. His father and wife spent a sleepless night in anxious waiting.
Early the next morning, his anxious father sent his brother-in-law to the factory where his son worked to ask about the situation. When the brother-in-law returned, he said that everyone at the factory said they had not seen Lu Yuanwei.
The father was not reassured, so he went to the factory himself to ask. The co-workers all said they really had not seen his son.
The co-workers at the factory said they did not know where Lu Yuanwei had gone, which made the old father even more anxious.
Lu Yuanwei’s father and older sister then called relatives, as well as Lu Yuanwei’s friends and classmates, one by one to ask, but still there was no result.
He was not at the factory, nor at the homes of relatives or friends. Where on earth had Lu Yuanwei gone?
The last co-worker to see Lu Yuanwei said that on the afternoon of March 26, after work, Lu Yuanwei treated his co-workers to a meal in the market town not far from home. The meal went on lively for two hours. Because Lu Yuanwei’s wife was about to give birth, his co-workers urged him to go home early.
After the meal, several co-workers saw that Lu Yuanwei had been drinking and were worried, so they prepared to escort him home.
One co-worker said that six people had been drinking, and together they had consumed one bottle of baijiu and three bottles of beer. Lu Yuanwei drank the least. When they were leaving, he still seemed relatively clear-headed.
This co-worker had intended to personally escort Lu Yuanwei home, but Lu Yuanwei said he was fine. He said, “You’d have to go so far and then come back. I’ll go back by myself. Don’t worry.” He started his motorcycle, revved the engine, and left. The co-worker stood there watching him go into the distance, watching until the taillight of his motorcycle disappeared.
In the night, the co-workers watched Lu Yuanwei ride away on his motorcycle. The departure point was only two kilometers from Lu Yuanwei’s home.
Yet it was from this moment on that Lu Yuanwei disappeared forever. Despite extensive searches, there was still no news. The family made the worst assumptions.
By March 28, more than 50 relatives of the Lu family had gathered at his home and began searching for Lu Yuanwei around his home and the factory.
Two days passed, and there was still no news of Lu Yuanwei. The more than 50 relatives at home searched almost everywhere, as if digging three feet into the ground, but still found no valuable clues. At their wits’ end, everyone went to the local public security organ to report the case.
On April 7, 2011, the body of a man appeared in the Lizhuang Village section of Lihe Town, Ningling County, Henan Province, along National Highway 310.
Early that morning, Mr. Zhang, a villager from Yanglou Village, Lihe Town, Ningling County, was preparing to take a bus to Shangqiu City by the side of National Highway 310, as usual. There was a ditch beside the bus stop sign. Mr. Zhang usually enjoyed fishing. While waiting for the bus, he went to the ditch out of curiosity to see whether there were any fish in it. Suddenly, to his horror, he discovered that a male body was actually floating in the water.
The Ningling County police arrived at the scene immediately and launched an investigation.
After careful examination, the forensic doctor found that the clothing on the body had many abrasions and tears, the head and face had multiple soft tissue avulsion injuries, and there was friction on the skull and bone surface defects. There was a penetrating injury to the head. This was a contrecoup injury formed under instantaneous violent and severe concussion.
The forensic doctor finally concluded that the various injuries on the body were consistent with the characteristics of a vehicle accident.
The site where the body was found was right beside National Highway 310, and the deceased had the characteristics of death in a traffic accident. The police quickly launched a search around the scene, but did not find traces of a traffic accident.
After comprehensive analysis, the police believed that after the traffic accident, the perpetrator had moved the body here in an attempt to destroy the scene, destroy evidence, and evade punishment. This was the perpetrator’s body-dumping site, not the first scene where the traffic accident occurred.
On the third day after Lu Yuanwei’s disappearance, his second daughter was born, but she did not see her father. More than ten days passed. More than 50 people from the Lu family, relatives, and neighbors kept searching, but there was still no sign of Lu Yuanwei. Hope grew ever dimmer.
In order to trace the missing person Lu Yuanwei, the Ningling County police collected a large amount of relevant information about Lu Yuanwei, entered it into the national missing persons information database, and mobilized multiple police forces, including criminal investigation, public security, and the Shiqiao Police Station, to carry out key investigations into the missing man’s interpersonal relationships, workplace, and motorcycle, and to conduct screening visits throughout the county. Still, there were no clues.
One case involved a person mysteriously disappearing without any warning, while the other involved an unidentified male body appearing in a ditch. Was this a coincidence? With no very clear clues found in either case, the police decided to ask Lu Yuanwei’s family to come to the scene for identification.
The result of the identification was exactly as the police had expected: the victim was Lu Yuanwei.
Lu Yuanwei’s father collapsed on the spot at the identification scene.
The small ditch beside the road in the Lizhuang Village section of National Highway 310 had been formed over time by rainwater and domestic sewage, and was more than one meter deep. Before his disappearance, Lu Yuanwei had been riding a black motorcycle home, but that motorcycle was now nowhere to be found. The police conducted a careful search and then pumped the river dry, but still did not find the motorcycle, mobile phone, or other items.
The police also printed more than 2,000 notices and posted them in townships around Shiqiao to solicit clues.
Based on the source of the body, the police determined the deceased’s movements before death and launched a key investigation around the 8-kilometer section along the Ningliu Highway and National Highway 310 and more than 60 surrounding villages.
Based on the victim’s injuries, the police outlined the scope of the suspect vehicle. There was an impact mark on the deceased’s nasal bridge. For this height to have been struck by the front vehicle, the height of the front vehicle could not be lower than the nasal bridge. The deceased’s clothing was sent for examination and was found to have greasy diesel oil on it. The police believed that the suspect vehicle should have been an agricultural four-wheeled vehicle or a three-wheeled vehicle.
The police then determined the investigative direction of finding the person through the vehicle. As visits went deeper, clues were ruled out one by one, and suspects were eliminated one by one.
On April 18, the case made a major breakthrough. During road surface examination, the police discovered important trace evidence at the intersection of Huali Zhang Village on the Ningliu Highway. This location was less than one kilometer from where Lu Yuanwei and his co-workers had parted.
The police found a somewhat inconspicuous scratch mark on the road surface.
After careful study of this scratch mark, the police determined that it matched the characteristics of a traffic accident. Even stronger evidence appeared in the garbage heap under the small bridge at the intersection. The police found several pieces of black plastic similar in color to the motorcycle ridden by the victim. Among them, a palm-sized piece of cloth played a decisive role.
This piece of cloth matched the characteristics of an overall separation trace, that is, it had been scraped off clothing and fallen to the ground.
The police immediately determined that the small bridge should be the first scene of the incident.
On April 22, the police found on a surveillance video in Lihe Town along National Highway 310 that at 8:23 p.m. on March 26, the time period before the missing Lu Yuanwei disappeared, a six-wheeled flatbed truck from a tree-buying yard had passed due north of Shiqiao Town. At that time, Lu Yuanwei was in front of the vehicle.
On April 23, the police decided to send out six visiting teams to focus on checking more than 20 wood processing and trading sites throughout the county one by one.
At the entrance of Huali Zhang Village, not far from the crime scene, there happened to be a wood purchasing factory. Coincidentally, this wood factory had a flatbed six-wheeled agricultural vehicle.
This vehicle was very special. It was specifically used to haul branches and wood, so there were especially many scratches on both sides of the vehicle.
The police carefully inspected the parts of the vehicle that might have come into contact with the motorcycle. In the box holding the battery, the police again found plastic fragments from the motorcycle.
The police found the driver of the suspect vehicle, Song Xinli. Song Xinli’s driver’s license had expired, and the vehicle he was driving had no license plate registration, so he was administratively detained by the police.
After Song Xinli was sent to the detention center, he felt tremendous pressure.
Faced with the evidence, Song Xinli finally confessed to the unbearable scene of the night of March 26.
On the evening of March 26, after selling branches in the county seat, Song Xinli returned to the wood purchasing factory by vehicle without even eating dinner. He planned to earn more money this year to build a house for his family, and during this period he had been working desperately hard. After 8 p.m., Song Xinli reached the entrance of the wood factory. He looked left and right, then turned right. At the same time, Lu Yuanwei said goodbye to his co-workers and rode his motorcycle home. He was already very close to home. He never imagined that disaster lay ahead.
The motorcycle Lu Yuanwei was riding crashed into Song Xinli’s agricultural vehicle, which was making a right turn. A major traffic accident occurred.
According to Song Xinli’s confession, he had wanted to pull the injured person up and take him for rescue, but unexpectedly he had died.
At the time, he thought of his own financial difficulties, and that if he had killed someone in a collision, he would not be able to afford the compensation, so he suddenly conceived the idea of dumping the body and destroying the traces.
On April 26, criminal suspect Song Xinli was brought to the crime scene. The process of identifying the scene reconstructed Song Xinli’s movements that night. He put the injured person and the wrecked motorcycle into the truck bed. He could not even remember how long he had driven; he only remembered that there was a ditch by the roadside, so he threw the body into the ditch and fled the scene in panic. After dumping the body that night, Song Xinli returned to the wood factory near the crime scene. Using the excuse of duty, he sent away the old man who usually watched the yard, and then buried the motorcycle and the blood-stained cotton quilt in the wood factory.
Song Xinli in the detention center felt that his luck was truly terrible. He had more than 10 years of driving experience and had never had a major accident, but this time a calamity had come out of nowhere. Song Xinli believed that he had been making a right turn and driving normally, and that the deceased had caught up from behind him without turning on his lights and crashed into his vehicle. The accident had not been caused by him. He said that the drunk deceased had suddenly ruined two families.
After the traffic accident, Song Xinli did not rescue the person in time or call the police in time, but instead attempted to evade responsibility by luck, causing an even greater disaster. What he did not expect was that on May 4, with the determination of the forensic appraisal results, the nature of the case underwent another major change.
The forensic doctor conducted a diatom test on the lung and kidney tissues of the body and found the same type of diatoms as those contained in the water sample from the scene. This determined that the deceased had entered the water while still alive. That is, when Song Xinli dumped the body, the so-called corpse still had signs of life. Strictly speaking, it was not a corpse, but a living person. In that case, the nature of the case underwent a major change, from an ordinary traffic accident case to an indirect intentional homicide case.
After learning of the determination of the case, Song Xinli expressed immense remorse and at the same time expressed his greatest current wish: “After I get out, I will work desperately to earn money so that both families can live a better life.”
This tragedy dealt an even heavier blow to the family of the victim, Lu Yuanwei. His mother and wife cared for the two young children and cried every day. Regarding Song Xinli’s repentance, Lu Yuanwei’s family said they would not accept it.
This story was a tragedy for both families.
For Lu Yuanwei, riding a motorcycle after drinking, which led to the traffic accident, was irresponsible to himself and to his family. Song Xinli had originally been innocent and had originally done nothing wrong, but a single moment of misguided thought pushed both himself and others into the abyss.