Murder of Wu Shuoyan

Wu Shuoyan (吴硕艳) worked as a salesperson in a clothing store at a mall, which the McDonald's was a part of. She was married and had a five-year-old son at the time of her murder. Wu was waiting after work to meet her husband and son in the mall McDonald's. While Wu was there, a group of six persons (including a 12-year-old), entered the restaurant. A chair was thrown at Wu, and her head and face were stomped. The attack was captured on camera, with footage widely shared online. Wu died from her injuries. Police arrived and arrested the assailants. One witness told media: "The little boy who was with [the assailants] was so calm. Even when the police arrived, he kicked the victim in the head, yelling 'evil goes to hell. ==Investigation==

The perpetrators consisted of the Zhang extended family, who were originally from Wuji County, Hebei: All six were unemployed or not enrolled in education. Zhang reported having been a member of a group worshipping "Almighty God", It was reported that Zhang Qiaolian and Zhang Hang acknowledged guilt while the three others voiced no remorse. == Trial ==

Zhang Duo was too young to stand trial, but the other five perpetrators were committed to trial and appeared on 21 August 2014, before the Intermediate People's Court of Yantai, in the Shandong province. As for the other three defendants, Lü Yingchun, was sentenced to life in prison, Zhang Hang was sentenced to ten years of jail and Zhang Qiaolian to seven years. On May 2017, Lü Yingchun's sentence was reduced to 21 year and 3 months due to her good behaviour in prison. ==Reactions==

Chinese authorities stated that the perpetrators belonged to Eastern Lightning. Even prior to the attack, the sect had been banned in China, and in the wake of the murder, authorities engaged in widespread arrests of Eastern Lightning members. Representatives from Eastern Lightning publicly condemned the murder, stating it had been committed by "psychopaths" who had nothing to do with them. but with a reputation of independent reporting, published on 22 August 2014 (one day after the trial), two articles casting doubts on the official version. Reporter Yang Feng published the confessions of the main defendants during the trial, including passages where both Lü Yingchun and Zhang Fan claimed that theirs was a different "Almighty God" church from the one also known as Eastern Lightning and whose leader is Zhao Weishan. While Eastern Lightning worships as Almighty God a woman called Yang Xiangbin, In her book on Eastern Lighting, published by Brill in 2015, Australian scholar Emily Dunn quoted Yang Feng's article and noted that, "International media outlets repeated the Chinese assessment of the Church of Almighty God as bizarre and violent. What they overlooked were Lu Yingchun and Zhang Fan's statements to the court that although they started out as members of Eastern Lightning (in 1998 and 2007 respectively), they had outgrown it."--> Meanwhile, Chinese authorities had announced that both Lü Yingchun and the younger sister of the executed Zhang Fan, Zhang Hang, had been successfully "re-educated" in jail, and that Lü Yingchun was willing to join the official campaign against cults by writing a memoir and lecturing to fellow inmates. Although Lü maintained that hers was a group based on the belief that she and Zhang Fan were the real Almighty God, she also blamed books and Web sites of Eastern Lightning for having "ideologically corrupted" them in their youth. The murder prompted a wave of government campaigns to crack down on what the state deems as "evil cults". Eastern Lightning's mode of expansion is to proselytize among independent Protestant congregations (commonly termed house churches), and many leaders among these Protestant communities have criticized Eastern Lightning and assisted the state's efforts. ==References==