Beijing:
A missing Chinese baby, who was left in a car that had been stolen in northeast China's Jilin Province was strangled to death, police said on Tuesday.
Zhou Xijun, 48, who stole the car in which the baby had been left, surrendered to police on Tuesday and confessed that he had strangled the baby and buried him in the snow, according to the Jilin Public Security Department.
The baby's body has not yet been found.
Zhou, a native in the Gongzhuling City of Jilin, stole the car in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province on Monday.
Zhou drove the vehicle on the highway and found the baby on the backseat. He parked the vehicle on the roadside and then strangled the baby.
He abandoned the baby's clothes and the vehicle near Gongzhuling City.
The stolen car belonged to a local resident surnamed Xu, who parked the vehicle in front of the supermarket he runs and entered the store to turn on a stove, leaving his two-month- old baby in the back seat without shutting off the car's engine.
Xu came out from the supermarket minutes later only to find that his car was stolen with the baby still inside.
He called the police immediately.
"We won't hold you accountable, only if you stop the car and ensure the safety of my child," Xu and his relatives implored via a local traffic radio broadcast.
First the stolen car was found as Zhou abandoned it and took a minibus.
The municipal public security bureau of Changchun launched a city-wide hunt and dispatched more than 8,000 police to look for the baby on the streets and in residential communities and parks.
Film celebrity Yao Chen had also joined in the search efforts, using her microblog account to encourage more people to look for the child.