Court hospital order for HK woman who listened to voices in her head and killed daughter
The Hong Kong High Court sentenced a schizophrenic woman who hacked her daughter to death to serve a hospital order for an unspecified period on Wednesday (Sept 2).
On June 4, 2014, Ms Chu Lai-kam claimed she heard voices in her head telling her to kill her 18-month-old daughter.
She said that the voices told her that her son had been tied up and that the people responsible would return for her and her daughter.
The South China Morning Post reported that Ms Chu saw her son being tied up and was convinced by the voices to kill her daughter as quickly as possible.
She then proceeded to chop her daughter's neck with a knife which she had grabbed from the kitchen in her Sham Shui Po flat. She also cut herself in the left wrist in the process.
Ms Chu's daughter sustained over 40 cut wounds to various parts of her body including her head and neck and was later found lying in a pool of blood by the police.
Police also found Ms Chu's son, who did not witness the killing, waiting outside the flat as he had left his keys at home.
“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," said Ms Chu, who suffered headaches when she started hearing a man's voice in her head in May the same year.
Following the gruesome killing, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic by three psychiatrists.
Justice Maggie Poon Man-kay ruled that the sentence was "appropriate" after going through experts' reports which show that her actions were a result of her mental illness and that she did not fully understand her condition.
Ms Chu expressed deep regret over killing her daughter in a letter to the court, saying that she was now aware of what she had done.
Her siblings described her as a loving and caring mother to her children in letters to the court.
“This is the most tragic and unfortunate case as (Ms Chu) had no intention to kill the daughter she loved,” said her lawyer Edwin Choy Wai-Bond.
“She has already been punished by the loss of her daughter.”
Source: South China Morning Post
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