A mother was arrested on Sunday evening after her 12-year-old daughter was found dismembered in a flat in Mong Kok, according to police.
Speaking at a media briefing last night, Assistant District Commander Chung Chi-ming said officers arrived at the address about 9pm and found the 37-year-old woman outside the apartment.
The woman was unwilling to cooperate and officers had to force their way inside, he said.
In the bathroom, they found mutilated body parts, including a head and organs, which had clogged the bathtub drain, causing the flat to flood, Chung said.
He said that the woman was from the mainland but was a long-term resident in the city. The daughter reportedly went to school in city and had a Hong Kong an identity card. The two lived together in the 60-square-foot subdivided flat where the murder occurred.
Chung said the woman had no previous record of mental illness or domestic abuse.
“We have to wait for her condition to get better before the investigation,” said Chung, adding police were searching for a motive in the killing and for information about the girl’s father.
According to Apple Daily, a neighbor called police after the suspect borrowed her son’s phone for half an hour, claiming she was under surveillance and needed to call her husband.
Another neighbor, surnamed Tsui, told the newspaper she heard the noise of chopping, which lasted about 30 minutes, and also smelled antiseptic from suspect’s flat on Sunday morning.
“I thought the noise was children playing with toys,” Tsui said.
Later in the evening, Tsui said she noticed the stairs outside the apartment were flooded by water coming from inside the suspect’s flat.
Forensic pathologists arrived the scene on Monday morning. They collected 11 bags of dismembered body parts, Ming Pao reported.
