By Wang Anna

Armed police dispersed thousands of people yesterday who had been protesting outside a hotel in Shishou, Hubei Province, since Friday, following the suspicious death of one of its chefs, a witness told the Global Times.

“Armed police arrived at the Yonglong Hotel at about 3 am, and began clearing the crowd at about 5 am,” the witness, surnamed Yang, who manages a nearby hotel, said.

The people left and “things got back to normal” soon after the body of the 24-year-old chef was taken away, he said.

The protest began when the family of the dead man, Tu Yuangao, refused to accept the police’s claim he had committed suicide, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

According to a notice on the website of the city government, Tu was found lying in front of the hotel Wednesday evening. Police were called to the scene but found no evidence of him being assaulted or attacked.

They later claimed to have found a suicide note in his room.

The family disputed the claim and thousands of people blocked roads to the hotel Friday to stop anyone from moving Tu’s body, Yang said.

During the three-day protest, a fire engine and two police cars were damaged, but there were no reports of anyone being injured, Xinhua said.

“The family just wanted to know what had happened to their son before his body was cremated, which was what the police wanted to do,” Yang said.

“They don’t trust the police because people have said that some of the hotel’s stakeholders are local officials and there have been several suspicious deaths there,” he told the Global Times.

A 16-year-old girl died in the hotel a few years ago and police said it was suicide, the Xinhua report quoted local people as saying.

Several online posts and pictures about the incident have been deleted from Internet forums like Tianya.cn.

One blogger, who posted an image of Tu’s father lying on the ground beside his dead son, claimed the chef must have been murdered, as there was no blood near him. Police said he committed suicide by jumping from a third-floor window of the five-story hotel.

Calls made by the Global Times to the police and government in Shishou went unanswered yesterday.