Dad, Daughter Executed for McDonald's Murder

China has executed a father and daughter after they were convicted of murdering a woman at a McDonald's, the BBC reports. Three others received jail time in the 2014 incident. The attackers were members of a banned cult known as Church of the Almighty God, and they were apparently trying to recruit the woman they killed, one Wu Shuoyan, reportedly in her 30s. The daughter, Zhang Fan, twice asked for Wu's contact information. The victim's refusal to provide it prompted Zhang to throw a chair at her; the group thought Wu was "possessed by an evil spirit" and began attacking her.

"We had to destroy her," said father Zhang Lidong. The cult, also known as Quannengshen, has been banned since 1995, CNN reports, amid word of kidnappings and extortion as well as other violence. The group's website says some 400,000 members were arrested between 2011 and last year; hundreds of members have been held by Chinese officials since the killing, the BBC notes. The cult, which believes that God, in the form of a Chinese woman, will cause the apocalypse, says it has millions of believers. (More China stories.)