SHENZHEN police Sunday refuted claims that a panic at Laojie Station of Luobao Line was caused by a knife attack, as many people had claimed on their microblogs.

    Instead police said the panic was caused by a suspected mental patient pushing over a shelf at Dongmen Metro Shopping Center.

    The suspected mental patient, surnamed Huang, 28, is a Hong Kong native.

    Luohu police received calls at around 6 p.m. saying that a knife-attack incident had happened at Dongmen Pedestrian Street and crowds of people ran from shops inside the Metro station and on the ground floor.

    Police commandos and armed police officers arrived at the scene within three minutes. Further investigation showed that the panic was triggered by a mental patient who pushed down a shelf in a Metro shop.

    The panic forced the closure of Laojie Station, an interchange station of Luobao Line and Longgang Line, and 22 trains were affected.

    The Metro service resumed normal operations at 6:58 p.m.

    Dongmen Pedestrian Street is one of the busiest commercial areas in Shenzhen, with 500,000 people visiting or working there per day.(Han Ximin)