A 65-year-old grandfather has caused a social media storm in China after he kidnapped his own four-year-old granddaughter to demand a ransom of ¥500,000 ($72,500) from his daughter to pay off his gambling debts.
“You won’t see your daughter again,” threatened the man whose surname is Yuan, according to a report in the Shanghai Law Journal.
Yuan then threatened to kill his own daughter if she did not pay the ransom. Instead, the daughter reported Yuan to the police, who arrested him for extortion.
Sent to prison, Yuan tried to exonerate himself while inside by blaming his daughter. He also claimed she did not want him to get better, only to die. If that wasn’t enough, Yuan’s also dubbed his daughter “ungrateful,” and stated the kidnapping was a family matter, not a legal one.
How useless is a father like that!”
Social media users in China have expressed outrage at Yuan’s actions. One online commentator said: “How useless is a father like that!” Another said: “Extortion and violence are crimes and definitely not ‘family matters.’”
A similar case of a grandparent with a gambling problem took place in the US in June 2018. The ending was much more tragic, as a grandmother left her five-year-old grandchild to die in a baking-hot car for over six hours while she gambled at Kickapoo Casino in Oklahoma. A judge later sentenced Alanna Jean Orr to 17 years in prison.