CHINA: MAN GETS DEATH SENTENCE FOR TAXI DRIVER MURDER

a father was sentenced to death and his son to life imprisonment for killing a female taxi driver and then dismembering her body in the course of a robbery. Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court announced the verdicts against the two Jiangsu Province natives. The son had just turned 18 when the crime took place in Shanghai on November 11, 2007, the court said. After the pair strangled the woman, they sold her car and also stole got 600 yuan (US$88) in cash, a mobile phone and jewellery. In 2003, the father, 42-year-old Hong Guoxing, was released from prison for a previous crime and reunited with his son. The driver, surnamed Chen, was involved in an illegal taxi business in Danyang City of neighboring Jiangsu Province, the court said. They hid the dismembered parts into a box which they left in a foot massage house in Pudong.