BEIJING: Police in southern China have detained a woman after she admitted killing her four-year-old daughter because the child could not count, according to news reports.
Investigators talked the woman, identified only by her surname Du, into confessing and took her into custody last on Saturday, four days after her daughter was killed and her body dumped in a nearby town, the Beijing News and the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
Initially, Du reported to police that her daughter, Wang Mengyu, who had lived with her grandparents until last month, went missing while they were shopping in Huizhou in the booming southern province of Guangdong.
Her husband had offered a $6,400 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer.
Du told police she slapped her daughter unconscious because the child could not count from one to 100 and that she then tried to resuscitate the girl, the newspapers said.
The mother then smothered her daughter to death because she was worried about exorbitant hospital bills and her husband getting angry at her, the newspapers added.
