A murder suspect who was on the run for 16 years has been caught.

Police said yesterday that the suspect, a man surnamed Liu, fled Shanghai after allegedly killing one person and injuring two others in a restaurant.

Liu and five accomplices were said to have been in a verbal altercation and then a physical fight on the evening of July 26, 2001, in Touqiao Town of Fengxian District.

During the fight, a man surnamed Huang was stabbed to death, and the two others were critically injured and narrowly escaped being killed as well, police said.

A hunt for the suspects was launched, but all that was initially known about Liu was that he had a tattoo of a scorpion on his left arm.

The five accomplices were caught in Dalian, Tangshan and Qinghai within a month, but Liu escaped the net.

Fengxian police said about 20 police officers have handled the case in the past 16 years and traveled to Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hebei and Xinjiang seeking his whereabouts.

Last month, a group of investigators discovered Liu has a relative who was said to be working in Laizhou, Yantai city, Shandong Province, but this person, surnamed Li, was living abroad.

The “relative” who was working in a stone-cutting factory in Laizhou, called himself Li but was actually Liu, police said.

He was picked up at a rented house in Laizhou on August 30 and later is said to have confessed to the killing 16 years ago.