Things that those of us in the Pearl River Delta need to worry about include sinkholes, food safety, and air safety. Now we can add unmarked manholes to the list.
The bridge under which Wang went missing.
A corpse found in Guangzhou’s Tianhe District was identified June 7 as that of Wang Yueqing, a cyclist who went missing after falling into an unmarked manhole under a bridge 4 days earlier, Nandu Daily reports.
The accident, which took place on the intersection between Beihuan Expressway and Keyun Road, has left a gaokao candidate without a mother.
At about 9 p.m. on June 3, Wang, a Hunan native, was cycling with her family when they reached a bridge they needed to pass under. When under the bridge, Mrs Wang suddenly disappeared down a manhole. There was no warning sign, no barrier, and no light to prevent cyclists or pedestrians from falling down the hole.
Plenty of people still pass under the bridge every day.
Police reached the scene at 9:55 p.m., but heavy rain made the search procedure more difficult.
Two days later, her bike was found but the search for her body continued. An hour after that, a body was found. It was a woman of Wang’s age, but the face was unrecognisable.
On Saturday morning, Wang’s husband, Luo Xuekun, identified the corpse at the Guangzhou municipal Public Security Building. The body was wearing the same clothes and underwear as Wang when she went missing, and DNA tests verified that it was her.
Tianhe District’s finest lead the search
Her corpse has been placed face down in the funeral home as her face has been so badly maimed.
According to Xinhua, Luo told his son, who is one of this year’s gaokao candidates, that the reason Wang was unreachable was that her phone had broken. He didn’t want the child to be any more stressed than he already was, Luo told media.