© Quirky China News/Rex Features/HAPThe baby's mother, centre, who is reported to have had a breakdown after hearing her son was dead.
Zhou Xijun is said to have confessed to killing baby and burying body in snow after finding him on back seat of carA car thief in north-eastern China who discovered a baby boy asleep in a stolen 4x4 killed him and buried the corpse in the snow.
The 48-year-old thief's confession prompted a wave of seething incredulity on the internet in China and a bout of soul-searching about parenting, capital punishment and media censorship.
According to a post on the Jilin province public security bureau's microblog, Zhou Xijun turned himself in to Changchun city police at 5pm on Tuesday. He confessed that he stole the Toyota RAV4 from outside a supermarket on Monday morning, strangled the two-month-old boy, named Xu Haobo, after noticing him while driving on the highway, and buried his corpse in the snow. Zhou abandoned the vehicle outside a primary school in a nearby city and took a minibus back to Changchun.
The infant's father, a supermarket owner surnamed Xu, had left the car's engine running while he entered his market to turn on a stove. He emerged 10 minutes later to find the car missing, immediately called the police, and broadcast a message on a local radio station saying that he would not hold anybody accountable if the baby was safely returned.
The child's mother had a nervous breakdown after hearing Zhou's confession, Chinese media
reported. It is unclear whether the baby's body has been found.
Comment: He will be sorely missed, but the revolution of the mind goes on... Hasta la Victoria Siempre!