Yesterday, a Jiangsu TV station broke the news that police have arrested a former delivery man on suspicion of rape. The alleged victim? A woman whom he’d delivered a package to a few days before the incident. In addition, police say the suspect has a previous record of rape.
On September 25, a Nanjing resident surnamed Zhang told reporters that a delivery man had forced his way into her home back in July.
“He came in holding a pair of scissors,” she said.
She recognized him as a delivery man by the last name of Wang, who had brought a Tmall package to her home a few days before. According to Zhang, Wang had called her multiple times to check her availability before delivering the package; she suspects that he was trying to determine whether she lived alone.
After the alleged rape, discovering that Wang had a previous record angered Zhang; even though he didn’t work for Tmall directly, she believes that Alibaba’s Tmall should shoulder at least part of the blame for hiring him.
“If it wasn’t for him, would this have happened? I almost died.”
On September 25, Jiangsu media visited Wang’s former workplace, a shipping company that makes deliveries for Tmall, among other online platforms. According to staff, Wang had worked for “a few” months at the company, then quit the day before the alleged crime occurred.
The on-site staff were unsure whether the company had run a background check on Wang before hiring him; however, they stated that delivery employees are generally difficult to find and the turnover rate is high.
Chinese law currently does not require companies to check employees’ criminal records before hiring them.
The incident brings to mind data privacy concerns raised by Chinese tech users, as well as the scandal surrounding the murders of two Didi Hitch passengers this year.
It also follows an incident earlier this month, in which a ZTO Express driver in Wenzhou confessed to an attempted rape.