Police Cover Up: Chinese Student Killed by Speeding Police Car
A year after a brilliant Chinese student was killed by a police car on a pedestrian crossing, his parents have returned to Britain claiming a cover-up is denying them justice.
Xuanwei Zhang, 24, who was studying for a Master's degree in computing at Birmingham City University, suffered fatal head injuries when he was struck by the speeding black unmarked BMW on April 4 last year.
The officer driving was responding to reports that a car was being driven suspiciously in another part of the city when he collided with the student who was on a traffic light controlled pedestrian crossing.
Last week his parents travelled to Britain to demand answers after claiming they were deliberately being kept in the dark about what happened.
Xuanwei's father Zhongjin, 55, said their lives had been destroyed by their son's death and their pain was being made worse by the lack of progress with the police investigation.
The vehicle was carrying CCTV at the time of the accident, but 12-months on the parents are still no clearer what happened when Xuan was killed.
Last week the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) finally passed a full file on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which will decide whether to prosecute the police officer who was driving.
But Mr Zhang said he and his wife were losing faith that they would ever get justice and felt they were being ignored because they were Chinese.
He questioned why it had taken a year to carry out an investigation into a straightforward accident and also accused of the IPCC of failing to provide any information about how the case was progressing.
He said: "We are extremely disappointed with the inefficiency of the UK government, the police and the IPCC. If the same thing had happened in China this would have all been resolved by now.
"We are beginning to wonder if there is some sort of cover up because the police are involved. We just don't know."
His wife, Jianxiu Zhu, 53, added: "Our son was a hard-working and diligent student who dreamed of becoming an internet expert. We thought when he came to the UK he would fulfil that dream but instead, because of the actions of that police officer, his dreams and his life have gone."
Mr Zhang added: "It is baffling to us why the IPCC has taken so long to get to the bottom of what happened. What is more concerning to us is that during all this time the police officer carries on his life as normal. It feels to us like he is being protected by them, while we are ignored."
The engineer from Nan Jing said they would not stop fighting until they had justice.
He told the Daily Telegraph: "Our family bloodline has ended tragically because of this police officer's actions. There is no one to keep our family name alive "We scrimped and saved every penny to ensure that we could give our son the best education, we never thought that it would end like this.
"He [the driver] has not only completely ruined a promising young man, but also the hope of the entire family. There's nothing but utter darkness in our future. All we want now is truth and justice.
Mr Zhang added: "We also hope that through our fight for justice we can change things and make the roads safer in Britain by getting police officers to obey the same rules as other drivers."
But a spokesman for the IPCC insisted that the investigation had been a complex one that had involved technical reports compiled by collision experts.
The spokesman said a full file of evidence had now been passed to the CPS and IPCC Commissioner, Rachel Cerfontyne had also now met with the family to update them on the latest developments.
News published on: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10006438/Parents-of-Chinese-student-killed-by-police-car-demand-answers.html
Tags: IPCCMr ZhangofficerPolice Cover Up
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