TEASING a boy for his large physique sealed 11-year-old Liew Mei Fong’s fate on May 30, 2002.
She was alone at her home in Taman Seri Rampai, Wangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur when her mother’s tuition student arrived an hour earlier at about 3.30pm on that day for his classes.
The boy then was three months short of turning 13. Liew’s mother, a private school teacher, then aged 43, had told him to wait at her house as she was still busy at work.
While the boy, who had attended tuition at the place since he was seven, sat in the living room, Liew was said to have taunted him, calling the boy “fatty” and “stupid”.
It was not the first time she had teased him but on that day, he blew up and could no longer take her ridicule. The Form One student confronted Liew, before savagely attacking her with kitchen knives.
When he was done, he telephoned his uncle and asked to be taken home, claiming that the tuition class had been cancelled.
While he waited for his uncle, Liew laid unconscious in a bathroom and in a pool of blood with 24 stab and slash wounds all over her body.
Before the boy left with his uncle, he told another student who had arrived for tuition to go home as Liew’s mother had cancelled all classes.
Minutes after the boy left, Liew’s mother arrived home and was shocked to find drops of blood on the floor. She followed the blood trail, calling out for her daughter and the boy until she made the horrific find in the bathroom.
She screamed in shock and neighbours came to her aid and helped her take Liew to a private hospital but the girl, who had suffered massive blood loss, was pronounced dead.
The teacher called the boy and asked him what had happened.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry teacher, I don’t know why I did it,” he replied and apologised profusely.
Police later found the boy at his father’s Chinese medicine shop and arrested him. On June 8, 2002, the juvenile was charged for Liew’s murder. About two months later, the court allowed the boy bail. The court heard how the boy had inflicted injury on the girl with multiple knives from the victim’s kitchen.
He alleged that apart from taunting him, he was provoked further when the victim placed two knives in front of him and challenged him to use it on her.
On July 2, 2003, the boy was convicted and found guilty of killing Liew. Being a juvenile, he was ordered to be held at the Kajang Prison at the pleasure of the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong.
The boy’s lawyer, the late Karpal Singh, appealed for the boy’s freedom and on July 27, 2007, after serving four years in prison, the Court of Appeal made a landmark decision. It set the 18-year-old free after ruling that no laws existed to mete out a sentence for a child convicted of murder.
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