A Hong Kong mother who says a voice told her to chop her 18-month-old daughter to death has been ordered to stay in a psychiatric hospital for an unspecified period of time.
Chu Lai-kam stabbed her daughter more than 40 times on the neck and body on June 4 last year at her flat in Sham Shui Po.
She pleaded guilty at Hong Hong’s High Court to one count of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility and was sentenced yesterday, the SCMP reports.
The 38-year-old called police on the night of June 4, saying her son had been abducted and was tied up in the basement of the building. When they arrived, officers found the nine-year-old boy outside the flat as he had forgotten his keys, and the baby girl in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Chu, who had also tried to cut her own wrist, told police, “I killed my daughter… Someone tied up my son downstairs. It is better to kill myself than be bullied. I chopped my daughter to death about 10 times. I then chopped myself.”
She told officers that a man’s voice, which she claimed to have been hearing since May, told her to kill the girl as quickly as possible as the people who had abducted her son were coming for her. She also said she saw her son tied up in the basement through a window.
Chu was diagnosed with schizophrenia by three psychiatrists at the time of the killing.
Her barrister said in mitigation, “This is the most tragic and unfortunate case as [Chu] had no intention to kill the daughter she loved.”
“She has already been punished by the loss of her daughter.”
Chu’s son is now living with a foster family, while his father, who works in mainland China, visits on weekends.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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