Hong Kong engineer on trial for stabbing his girlfriend 30 times over sex tape fight claims mental illness-induced blackout
- Prosecutors reject the defendant’s claim that he had no recollection of the events in question due to a psychological episode
- Court hears defendant was seen on CCTV buying knife just before meeting his girlfriend, and hours after arguing with her about sex tapes
A young civil engineer murdered his girlfriend by stabbing her 30 times on a moving bus after she mentioned wanting to break up and demanded the return of their sex tapes, prosecutors told a Hong Kong court on Tuesday.
But defendant Ng Yan-kin, 26, has said he had no recollection of the knife attack on September 16, 2017, with the defence arguing that the killing of 20-year-old Annie Li Sin-heng did not constitute murder, but was instead an act of manslaughter committed during an episode of a mental disorder.
The High Court heard the pair had met online and started dating in July 2016, just over a year before Ng stabbed Li to death with a newly purchased knife on the upper deck of Citybus No 118 five minutes after it departed from the terminus in Siu Sai Wan.
Rescuers arrived to find Li unconscious in a pool of blood, with her head resting on her thigh. She was certified dead at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital about 30 minutes later, with the cause of death found to be multiple stab wounds.
A forensic pathologist who studied the 33 knife wounds on her body surmised that she had been stabbed “forcefully”, as seen from the associated fractures.