Man Grabs 3-year-old Girl From Her Mother and Cut Off Her Head on the Street (Photos)

 

The murderer being led away by police

 

The three-year-old girl was decapitated in an apparently random killing outside a subway station in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei.

 

The murderer, a 33-year-old man reportedly grabbed the girl from behind as she was entering the station with her mother shortly before noon on Monday.

 

The man, unknown to both mother and child, then cut the child's head off with a meat cleaver in the middle of the street.

 

The scene of the crime

 

The mother told local media how the three-year-old had been on a bike and that she thought the killer had intended to help push the girl up the street.

 

The man, identified only by his surname of Wang, then brought out the large meat cleaver and brought it down on her daughter's neck.

 

She told Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily how she tried to stop the killer, but was not strong enough to overpower him.

 

Several witnesses helped to subdue the attacker, after which police arrested him. 

 

Flowers have been left at the scene of the gruesome random attack in Taipei on Monday

 

Local media reported that the victim was the second oldest of four children, nicknamed 'Little Lightbulb' by her parents.

 

Her father works in the IT industry, and her mother is a housewife. She has a nine-year-old sister and a younger brother and sister who are two-year-old twins. 

 

Hours after the attack, an angry crowd gathered outside the police station where Wang had been taken, some brandishing baseball bats in apparent preparation for an attack on the suspect.

 

The government-run Central News Agency said the 33-year-old Wang had an arrest record for drug crimes and had been treated for mental illness.