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A mentally ill man allegedly stabbed four innocent people to death in the northern province of Ha Giang on Thursday morning.
Police have detained the 32-year-old man who reportedly stabbed his father and 2-year-old niece to death in their sleep at 4:30 a.m.
The alleged killer then ran next door and killed a relative and a man who tried to stop him.
A fifth victim survived the attack, which has rocked the local community.
Local officials said the perpetrator suffers from severe mental illness, which caused him to kill his own child in 2014. Due to his condition, authorities remanded the man to the Central Psychiatric Hospital in Hanoi, which discharged him in July.
Vietnam’s social affairs ministry recently announced that around 200,000 Vietnamese people suffer from severe mental illnesses and 15 percent exhibit violent behavior.
The ministry reported that Vietnam has yet to develop an effective mental treatment model and most facilities lack rehabilitation services and tend to isolate patients from the community.
Vietnam reported 1.51 intentional homicides per 100,000 people in 2011, up from 1.25 in 2008, the New York Times reported in August, using a World Bank database that cites figures from the United Nations.
But that was still below the average of two per 100,000 people reported across the Asia-Pacific region in 2012, the closest year for which data was available, the Times said.
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