Daily Sunshine, June 2, 2010

Yantai Evening News, June 2, 2010

Crime scene illustrations can often be useful, even entertaining aids to understanding complicated newspaper reports, but sometimes they are simply confusing.

Yesterday, a 46-year-old security guard named Zhu Jun entered a court building in Yongzhou, Hunan, and open fire upon court personnel. By the time he turned the gun on himself, he had killed three judges and injured another three people.

Two Chinese newspapers ran their own visual interpretations of the basic facts in the case:

In the reconstruction that appears in the Yantai Evening News, Zhu entered an office in the court building and sprayed gunfire across the room, killing a chief judge and two deputies. He then exited and shot a court clerk named Huang Lan, who was descending a stairway. Hemmed in by court workers (not shown), he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The image in the Daily Sunshine includes the court personnel who were hit while attempting to stop the attacker, but places just two judges in the main office — most likely presiding judge Zhao Hulin and deputy judge Zhao Qidong, who died at the scene. Huang Lan, who also died, is shown here in green. The building is laid out somewhat differently than in the Yantai Evening News image.

Perhaps this discrepancy can be explained by incomplete information about a developing situation; early reports in Sanxia Metropolis Daily and the New York Times have the attacker using a shotgun, a pistol, and a sub-machine gun, while later reports have a second pistol in place of the shotgun.

Or perhaps the illustrations are only intended to look nice on the front page, and any help they provide to readers is simply a bonus.