Xian -- For Cao Fenwa, a villager of Fenglinzhai Village in Lantian County's Languan Town, this year's Lantern Festival turned into a nightmare. Her husband Zhao Xian'an, who was the village group leader, went out early that morning to mediate a neighborhood dispute. However, dozens of minutes later, he was found lying on the village street, barely alive, and subsequently passed away.
Village Party Secretary Lin Sheng'an said, "He was a qualified good cadre, I know him well, he was a good person. The funds and labor force for road construction were not involved from the village side; it was all arranged by Zhao Xian'an."
That evening, when Li Mou returned home and met Zhao Xian'an and his son, they drank alcohol at Zhao's house. During their conversation, they discussed the matter, and Zhao and his son agreed to stop the construction. "But that night, I drank too much and went straight to sleep without informing the group leader. I didn't expect him to still go to Zhao's house the next day," said Li.
"At the time, there indeed was a fight," said Nie Xianfeng, the chief of Lantian County's Chengguan Police Station, introducing the situation to reporters yesterday. After the incident, it was Zhao's family who called the police. They immediately intervened in the investigation and temporarily controlled Zhao's two sons. "However, the autopsy results have not yet come out, and the nature of the case has not been determined." Currently, the police are conducting further investigations.
Li said, "That day, I went to negotiate with them, saying that the toilet being built opposite my house door was inappropriate, and I hoped they would change the location. But the other party refused to listen." Subsequently, he sought help from the village group leader Zhao Xian'an to resolve the issue. On the evening of the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, Zhao Xian'an agreed to mediate the matter.
According to Cao Fenwa, at 7:40 am on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, after she and her husband got up, her husband, who served as the village group leader, finished washing up and was about to leave. "He said he was going to find Zhao to mediate matters," said Cao Fenwa. At around 8 am, while she was busy in the kitchen, someone suddenly shouted urgently to her, saying, "Your husband is in trouble."
"Halfway there, the doctor said there was nothing that could be done. Upon our insistence, we still had the person taken to the hospital for emergency treatment, but ultimately, he couldn't be saved," said Zhao Xinuo, Zhao Xian'an's younger brother, choking back tears.
Zhao Xiyong, Zhao Xian'an's second son, said, "At the time, apart from a wound on my father's mouth and blood flowing from his mouth, there were no other obvious injuries on his body. Later, during the autopsy, I was present, and the autopsy personnel said that there was bruising under my father's abdomen."
The villagers say that Zhao Xian'an, after becoming the village group leader in October 2010, did quite a few good deeds for the masses. There was over a hundred mu (Chinese unit of area) of sloping land on the south side of the village. Due to the lack of a proper road, the villagers had always relied on carrying and shouldering their harvests. After Zhao Xian'an took office, last November, he constructed a production road that was approximately five meters wide and several kilometers long, allowing even farm vehicles to drive up, eliminating the villagers' worries about harvesting crops. Additionally, "During the Spring Festival, he often mediated disputes among the villagers and personally paid out of pocket to visit the difficult households in the group."
According to the earliest witness, 66-year-old Dong Tiansheng, who discovered Zhao Xian'an lying on the street, he stood in his yard early in the morning and suddenly saw someone lying next to a pile of sand and gravel on the roadside. Upon closer inspection, it was Zhao Xian'an. "He was lying on his back on the ground, eyes half open, blood flowing from his mouth, motionless."