Body of missing schoolboy found hanging in mountain area
The body of a teenage student, who disappeared from his school dormitory 106 days ago, was found on Sunday in the mountains near the school, local police said.
DNA tests have confirmed that the body found hanging in a forest in the Jinji Mountain area of Yanshan County in east China's Jiangxi Province, was Hu Xinyu, who mysteriously disappeared from his school dormitory on October 14, police said in an announcement on Sunday.
Clothes on the body also match those that Hu was wearing when he went missing.
A digital recorder was found near the body, they added.
Jinji Mountain, where Hu Xinyu's body was found, is just one minute's walk (60 meters) from his school, according to Baidu Maps.
An autopsy was performed on Hu at the city's Qianshan County Funeral Home on Sunday afternoon, according to Thepaper.cn. But results have not been released.
Hu is captured by a surveillance camera in the dormitory building of Zhiyuan High School on October 14, 2022.
Hu's family is now applying for investigations to be conducted by police from other nearby areas. And whether Hu hanged himself still needs to be investigated, according to the news portal Jiupai.
"Xinyu, we are on our way to find the truth about you, and we will not stop," Hu's mother said in a video posted on social media on Sunday.
Aerial screenshots of Hu's school campus were released by Jiangxi police on January 7. Local police reported that Hu may have left the school on his own and they were trying to find him.
Hu's disappearance sparked national attention after his family filed a missing person's report on October 15.
Police said earlier that they had been searching for the missing boy since the report was filed and had found "no trace or evidence of Hu's murder, suicide or accident inside the school". Hu left the school on his own, they noted.
However, the search for Hu never stopped, with residents and government workers launching a massive hunt for the teen this month.
"If Hu hid in the woods and bushes off the road, it would have been difficult to find him, because they are too dense," a member of the city's rescue team told the news portal dzwww.com.
