The mother of a Chinese woman who was battered to death in a senseless killing that shocked Britain has spoken of her enduring grief on the anniversary of the loss of her only child.
Jia Ashton, a petite 25-year-old economics graduate from Guilin, was beaten to death in a bungled robbery by jobless drifter David Simmonds as she walked home through woodland from her office job in Derbyshire on March 10, 2011.
Simmonds killed Jia after he took her MP3 player and mobile phone. He was jailed for 28 years in October after admitting to the murder.
Jia had been planning to start a family with her husband, Matthew, a music teacher.
Her mother, Pan Ning, was devastated, saying last year after Jia's death: 'In China, if you kill someone, you have to die for it. If you take a life, you pay with a life. In England, the laws are too lenient.'
But speaking this week from her home in Guilin, the 50-year-old - who goes by the English name Penny - said she no longer wished 21-year-old Simmonds dead. 'Even if he was dead, it wouldn't bring Jia back to me,' she said.
