A SOPHOMORE at Shenzhen University who has attracted wide attention across the country over a video posted online showing him quarrelling with an alleged civil servant over a minor car accident apologized yesterday for verbal abuse in the footage.
I m sorry. I shouldn t have said those nasty words against him [the alleged public servant], said the student, who was only identified as Yang. He said he didn t mean to show off his family wealth as what he said in the footage but was just trying to scare off the middle-aged man.
The video was posted online Sunday night and has had more than 130,000 visits in two days, yesterday s Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
In the video, taken by an unidentified student, Yang s electric bike hit a car parked in the campus about 10 days ago. He shouted angrily at the car driver, who was not identified.
The man asked him to stop several times and finally became angry, saying the car belonged to a government agency. However, Yang became even angrier, saying he would become more powerful than the man in 10 years when the man would be dead. You drive such a cheap car, worse than my father s. I ve already memorized your car plate number and you are dead, Yang said in the video.
Many netizens said it was outrageous for a young, rich student to say things like that, while some were also dissatisfied with the man driving a government car for personal use, the newspaper said.
Yang said the accident occurred March 23 at about 5 p.m., but what was on the video was not the whole story. I accidentally hit the car and apologized to him immediately. But he did not listen and insisted on my compensating him. It was just a finger-size scratch and I said he could get that from his insurance company. He said he did not care and he was working at a government department. So I became angry and started shouting at him and that was when the video started, he said.
I didn t know why he couldn t just let me go. It was his fault because he parked the car in an illegal area, he said.
Other students who witnessed the accident said: We were there and the boy was too fierce. (Wang Yuanyuan)
