Students went back to class Friday, just two days after an irate driver plowed his truck into a crowd on the campus of a south China high school. Four students and one parent were killed, the local government said.
Many witnesses of Wednesday's tragedy were reluctant to recall the gruesome scene.
"Seven of the nine classmates in my dorm went home Wednesday night," said Peng Cuiping, a first-year student at Chengdong High School in Doumen District of Zhuhai. "The two of us who stayed huddled together in one bed and were haunted by nightmares."
The school was closed on Thursday.
The city's education bureau sent a team of 23 counselors to the school on Thursday to help students, teachers and parents who were affected by the tragedy.
The team will stay for a month to provide counseling 24 hours a day, said an official of the education bureau who is in charge of student mental health.
The truck driver, a 49-year-old man surnamed Luo, reportedly suffered strained relations with his wife and had a recent dispute with the local traffic police who confiscated his unlicensed motorcycle.
Luo drove a truck to the high school on Wednesday afternoon and then rammed into a crowd of students who were about to go home, killing two schoolboys, two girls and a 49-year-old man who was waiting to take his child home.
Another 19 people were injured, including eight boys, 10 girls and a passer-by. Two of the cases are serious, but doctors said the injured were in stable condition.
(Xinhua News Agency November 7, 2008)