Olympic visitors are still shocked by the news of the stabbing death of Minnesota tourist Todd Bachman, the father-in-law to the coach of the US Men's Volleyball Team.
The Drum Tower in Beijing after an American was stabbed to death. (Photo Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Bachman, his wife Barbara, and a Chinese tour guide were stabbed yesterday during a visit to Beijing's historic Drum Tower. The assailant, Tang Yongming, was a Chinese man from the coastal Chinese city of Hangzhou. After the stabbing, Tang jumped off the tower, killing himself. Bachman's daughter, former Volleyball Olympian Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon, was also present but was unhurt.
Today, the U.S. Olympic Committee announced that after an eight-hour surgery at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Barbara Bachman was in critical but stable condition. Her son-in-law, Hugh McCutcheon, did not coach the men's volleyball team today against Venezuela. Just before the game, the team linked arms and bowed their heads.
A Chinese-language report by the New China News Service (Xinhua) said that Tang, 47, was a worker at an unknown factory in Hangzhou, but in 2006, he resigned and sold his home. At the time of yesterday's stabbing, he had no set home or job. He left Hangzhou for Beijing on August 1. The report also said that he and his wife divorced five years ago.
I couldn't find that report on the Xinhua website a day after the incident, but it was documented on numerous Chinese bulletin boards including this one here. Xinhua's English Web site today had a report on President Hu Jintao expressing sympathy over Bachman's death.
While the case is still under investigation the motivations of Tang will surely be something that the American media will follow. Many articles reporting on the incident added that violence against foreigners is rare in China. The New York Times also noted that the victims weren't wearing anything that would have identified them as American or having a connection to a U.S. Olympic team.
Update (8/11/08): Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon and her husband, Hugh McCutcheon, have released a statement. You can read it here.
Comments
Todd Bachman was the CEO of Minneapolis’ largest garden center. The Bachman family has been running a very successfully business here for over 120 years. He and the extended Bachman family were/are known as great employers as well as generous benefactors to the Lutheran congregations they attended. If your sweetheart gave you flowers in the famous purple wrapper you knew this was a special occasion. The familiar purple color is even symbolic of the Bachman families patriotic efforts during WWII. This was a senseless murder of a truly exceptional person.
Well no, let’s not get all up in arms over one lone murder by one lone kook. After all, it WAS Bachman’s fault that he was murdered while vacationing in Beijing, because he wasn’t wearing a 2′x3′ sandwich board identifying himeself as being connected to the Olympics.
Lisa Chiu, the author of this article, and so many others, seem to be diverting the world’s attention away from the fact that a visitor was murdered after being INVITED to their country, pointing the finger of blame instead at the murder victim… and thereby absolving their country of any wrongdoing. Given China’s record on human rights, this incident retierates its whole-hearted disregard for the sanctity of human life.
I cannot believe the “restraint” the media is demonstrating in the wake of this brutal incident. I don’t care if Bachman was running stark naked in the Forbidden City, it doesn’t make it OK or “understandable” that he was killed by a raving lunatic that obviously, Chinese security was not prepared to cope with. Random act? Perhaps. But not one that should be dismissed or even merely accepted by the rest of the world. Todd Bachman was a human being with a family and friends and a business and a life. There is no excuse for what happened and more of the media should express the outrage it deserves.
Let’s all stop pretending that the Olympics represents a love-fest, a “gathering of the world’s greatest atheletes in the spirit of friendship and brotherhood, proving that sports break down all cultural boundaries” or whatever this year’s feel-good PR is espousing. They’ve largely become a political arena for various organizations with an axe to grind or an agenda, akin to the Berlin games in 1936.
Let’s put the bazillions of dollars spent on this stage show toward feeding, educating, clothing and sheltering the millions of families who live in abject poverty around the world.