A CHINESE STUDENT has been executed for stabbing a woman to death in a vicious road rage attack, after he accidentally knocked her over with his car, because he feared he might have had to pay her compensation.

Yao Jiaxin, 21, was most likely killed by lethal injection after recently losing his appeal to the Supreme People’s Court, the Guardian reports.

Last April, Yao knocked a woman off her bike in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province. He became enraged when the victim, 26-year-old mother Zhang Miao, jotted down his licence plate as he thought she would try to seek compensation for her minor injuries.

Xinhua news agency reports that the court said in a statement: “Yao stabbed the victim’s chest, stomach and back several times until she died. The motive was extremely despicable, the measures extremely cruel and the consequences extremely serious”.

The case became the focus of massive internet attention and had been linked to growing anger over perceived double standards in justice applied to the elite and to regular citizens. The case has been compared, not always appropriately, to a separate incident – in which the son of a prominent policeman allegedly told witnesses to a fatal traffic accident he was responsible for that he would not be prosecuted because of his connections.

After Yoa had confessed to Miao’s murder, he told police that he feared a “peasant woman would be hard to deal with” over the accident, the BBC reports.