BEIJING (Kyodo) -- A Chinese court is set to sentence a man next week over a knife attack near Shanghai last June in which a Japanese mother and child were injured and a Chinese bus attendant who tried to intervene was killed, a Japanese government source said Saturday.

The first hearing of the case held at the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court earlier this month was closed to the media.

It remains to be seen whether the motive of the accused, a Chinese man in his 50s who was subdued after stabbing the mother and child at a stop for a Japanese school bus on June 24, will be disclosed at the sentencing hearing on Thursday.

The attendant, Hu Youping, 54, died of stab wounds days after trying to stop the attack. The man had recently moved to Suzhou in Jiangsu Province and was unemployed at the time of the assault.

The Japanese woman in her 30s had been waiting with her son of preschool age for her older child to return from school before the knife attack.

In September, the 10-year-old son of a Japanese father and Chinese mother was fatally stabbed in Shenzhen in southern China's Guangdong Province on his way to a Japanese school. The first court hearing of the case is scheduled to be held next Friday.

Tokyo has repeatedly asked Beijing to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals living in China.