A PRIMARY schoolboy had his left ear severed by the mother of one of his schoolmates, who was a close friend of his parents.

The woman, surnamed Lin, was thought to be mentally ill, a Southern Metropolis Daily report said Saturday. Lin is receiving treatment at a mental hospital in Dongguan.

Doctors at Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital reattached the severed ear for Ah Peng, 8, a Grade 2 primary student, hours after the attack March 22, but said there was little hope the operation would be a success.

“The ear necrotized after it was separated from the body for such a long time,” Tao Jing, a surgeon with the hospital, said. “It blackened the second day after surgery.”

Tao was not certain whether Ah Peng’s hearing would be impaired.

The incident happened at about 9 a.m. March 22 when Lin invited Ah Peng to her home in Dongguan, three floors below Ah Peng’s, to play with her son, Ah Chun.

She suddenly attacked Ah Peng and cut off his left ear while the boy was playing.

Lin said later she could not remember clearly what had happened.

“I had a headache at the time and took the scissors,” she said. “I felt I had a doll when cutting off his ear. He did not look real to me.”

Lin’s husband Zhong Yaowen, said he had long suspected his wife was mentally ill.

“Actually one day before the incident, she looked very weird,” he said.

Ah Peng’s parents, Zhong Fulong and Zhong Hongying, natives of Longyan, Fujian Province, who were employed by a factory in Songgang Subdistrict, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, said they had been on good terms with Lin and Zhong Yaowen.

“We are acquaintances in the hometown and lived in the same building here,” Zhong Fulong, the father, said. “Our boys went to the same school and were good friends. We never found anything wrong with Lin.”

Ah Peng’s mother said Lin injured her son out of jealousy because Ah Peng’s school performance was much better than her son’s.

Lin’s husband promised he would pay for Ah Peng’s medical treatment.

Two hospitals specializing in plastic surgery, one in Guangzhou and the other in Shenzhen, had offered to attach an artificial ear for the boy, the Daily said yesterday.

Lin wouldn’t be charged if she was confirmed mentally ill, law experts said. (Li Jing)