( CNN ) -- Two members of a banned Chinese doomsday cult were sentenced to death Saturday for the brutal murder of a woman in a McDonald 's restaurant in May , Chinese state media reported . Zhang Fan and Zhang Lidong were among five members of the Church of Almighty God , or `` Quannengshen , '' tried on murder charges in August over the killing in Zhaoyuan , Shandong Province , the state-run Xinhua agency reported . Three fellow cult members , Lyu Yingchun , Zhang Hang and Zhang Qiaolian , were sentenced to life , 10 and seven years in prison respectively for their roles in the attack . The four Zhangs were related , according to the report . A court statement said the victim , a 37-year-old woman named Wu Shuoyan , was attacked after refusing to give her phone number to the group , who were allegedly attempting to recruit new members . Zhang Fan and Lyu called her an `` evil spirit , '' before Zhang bludgeoned her head with a chair , then jumped on her and trampled her head , the statement said . Zhang Lidong bashed the victim 's head with a mop hard enough to break it , and stomped on her face and head , while Lyu kicked her waist and prevented McDonald 's staff from intervening , the court statement said . IN DEPTH : 'Eastern Lightning , ' the banned religious group that has China worried . Linked to kidnappings , violence and extortion , the Church of Almighty God has been on a list of 14 banned religious groups issued by China 's Ministry of Public Security since 1995 . Founded in the 1990s in Henan Province , the group believes that Jesus has been reincarnated as Yang Xiangbin , the wife of the group 's founder , Zhao Weishan . The couple fled to the United States in 2000 , Xinhua reported . The group , also known as Eastern Lightning ( `` Dongfang Shandian '' ) , preaches that the righteous are engaged in an apocalyptic struggle against China 's Communist Party -- which it refers to as the `` great red dragon . '' Belonging to a tradition of heterodox , quasi-Christian Chinese religious movements , the cult was estimated as having between several hundred thousand and one million members , according to Emily Dunn , an Asian studies academic at the University of Melbourne who wrote her doctoral thesis on the group . In August , Chinese state media reported that police had arrested nearly 1,000 suspected members of the group , including nearly 100 `` backbone members . '' The report said those arrested were responsible for `` numerous '' suicides and murders , including those of their own family . In 2012 , hundreds of members were rounded up after the group publicly proclaimed the end of the world was imminent . In a statement provided to CNN in June , Hong Kong-based members of the group responsible for its English-language website said it was `` very natural '' for the Chinese Communist Party to blame the group for the McDonald 's death because the party slandered and then suppressed those that disagreed with it . `` They always find some excuse in advance and fabricate things and slander them , '' said the statement . READ MORE : The future of Christianity in China . CNN 's Dayu Zhang and Katie Hunt contributed to this report .
Five members of a Chinese cult have been sentenced for a murder in a McDonald 's . Two were sentenced to death for the killing of a woman who refused to give them her name . The group , Children of Almighty God , has been banned in China since 2005 . Its members believe Jesus has been reincarnated as a Chinese woman .