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China ‘cult’ members charged for McDonald’s killing: state media

Five people accused of being members of a religious cult charged with killing a woman in a McDonald's restaurant who refused to give them her phone number, says offical report

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The family of victim Wu Shuoyan mourn in front of the McDonald's restaurant in Shandong in which she was killed. Photos: SCMP Pictures

China has charged five people who were accused of being members of a religious cult for the intentional homicide of a woman at a McDonald’s restaurant, state media said on Thursday.

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The woman, surnamed Wu, was beaten to death on May 28 at the restaurant in Zhaoyuan, in China’s eastern Shandong province, after refusing to give her telephone number to the suspects, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They were seeking to recruit the woman into a cult called Quannengshen, it said.

The group, which can be translated as ‘Church of Almighty God’, is a doomsday cult that was outlawed by the government in the mid-1990s, according to media reports.

The suspects were charged with “intentional homicide for the murder of a customer in a McDonald’s outlet”, Xinhua said.

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The news agency also quoted the indictment saying: “The circumstances are especially serious, their means are especially cruel, and the aftermath is especially serious.”

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