A teenage girl from China has been arrested on manslaughter charges after she tied her mother to a chair for a week and left her there to die.
The 16-year-old, from the Heilongjiang province in northern China, was angry at her mother after she sent her to an internet addiction camp where she claims to have been beaten and mistreated, according to Chinese investigative news site The Paper. The young teen wanted revenge on her mother, and so tied her up in their home and starved her to death.
It is believed the teen attempted to extort thousands of dollars in ransom from her relatives, by sending her aunt photos and videos of her mother tied up.
The aunt wired the money, which the young woman hoped to spend on setting herself up in Harbin city and attend college to study physics.
When the funds were received, she went to free her mother - but found her in a critical condition. The mother died and the girl surrendered to the police.
The young woman, who wrote about her traumatic experience at the Chinese bootcamp on a blog post before holding her mother hostage, had previously stabbed her father during an argument about dropping out of school and working at a nightclub earlier in the year.
Her father, who survived the ordeal but was admitted to hospital, was swayed into sending the troubled teen to boot camp for internet addiction and rehabilitation.
In February, the girl was reportedly kidnapped and driven to the Shadong Science and Technology Defence Training site, over 1500km away from her hometown.
It is understood the girl tried to escape twice during the journey, but was unsuccessful. Instead, she was forced to spend four months in the internet addiction boot camp, before finding another way to escape.
The rebellious teen wrote about her experience - describing how students were regularly beaten for no reason, and made to eat from a toilet pit if they didn't behave.
"I am angry. People point at my nose and call me unfilial and worse than a beast," she wrote, according to The Independent.
"It was them who sent me there. It was them who cursed me and beat me, it was them who sabotaged my life and libelled my character; but it was also them who said they loved me.
"My friends here, if it were you, what would you do?
"I will use their money to practice boxing and martial arts, and ambush them later. I will make them disabled, if not die."
Her post reportedly led other participants who had either left or escaped from the camp to support her claims of abductions, beatings and other physical punishments.
One teen, who said he was abducted by two men claiming to be police officers and taken to the camp, alleges tasers and sleep deprivation for discipline were used on him, and that he was punched, sworn at and had his hair pulled.
According to the official website of the addiction school, which reportedly opened in 1996, claims to have helped more than 7000 "troubled teens".
Parents are only allowed to visit their children once every three months, and participants are banned from smoking, drinking, falling in love, trying to escape, fighting or contradicting the instructors.