An office of the Chinese Communist Party on Sunday condemned “seeking revenge through violence” after a man surnamed Wang in the eastern province of Jiangxi confessed to killing a 10-year-old boy who had allegedly bullied his daughter.

“Regardless of the motive, with respect to the law, there are only those who abide by it and those who break it,” the party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission wrote on social app WeChat.

On Friday, the government of Xinzhou District in the city of Shangrao published a notice on microblogging platform Weibo saying that a 41-year-old man had been taken into custody on suspicion of fatally stabbing a student surnamed Liu that morning at Shangrao No. 5 Primary School over a “dispute.” The day after the incident, the district government announced that the suspect had confessed to the crime and that the principal of the school, surnamed Zhu, had been suspended.

Over the weekend, purported screenshots of a group chat between parents of students at the primary school circulated online, appearing to show the suspect saying on the night before the incident that the boy had been bullying his daughter. According to the screenshots, the boy’s father and the students’ teacher said they were not aware of the bullying, though the former offered to discuss the matter further in a private chat and the latter said they would look into the claims the next day.

A staff member surnamed Fang with the Xinzhou District government told Sixth Tone on Tuesday that the case is being investigated and that updates will be posted on the district’s official Weibo account. Sixth Tone’s phone calls to Shangrao No. 5 Primary School went unanswered Tuesday morning.

The city education bureau, the district police, and the district political and legal affairs bureau have launched a joint investigation into the case. According to The Beijing News, students who witnessed the attack received psychological counseling on Friday afternoon.

Editor: David Paulk.

(Header image: VCG)