BEIJING - A gatekeeper at a Beijing kindergarten slashed 15 students and three teachers with a kitchen knife today, killing one child and leaving others terrified and covered in blood, police and news reports said.

Two other children suffered serious injuries, according to police.

A suspect was detained and identified as Xu Heping, a 51-year-old man with a history of schizophrenia who had worked at the kindergarten for two years, a police spokesman said.

Xu was a psychiatric patient at a Beijing hospital for five months in 1999, according to police.

Authorities received reports that a man had been "hacking people up at the kindergarten," the Web site www.sina.com said. Officers were sent to the scene within a minute and arrested the man, police said.

The kindergarten is run by a hospital of Peking University, one of China's most prominent universities.