PETALING JAYA: The Hong Kong High Court jury found a Malaysian doctor guilty of murdering his wife and daughter in 2015.
According to South China Morning Post, the jury’s unanimous conviction of Dr Khaw Kim Sun comes following a retrial.
He was found guilty of causing the deaths of Wong Siew Fing, 47, and their second child Lily Khaw, 16, using a leaky yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide.
He had initially been convicted on two counts of murder in 2018.
However in 2023, Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal overturned his conviction and ordered a retrial in the High Court, ruling that the trial judge had misdirected the jury in 2018.
Dr Khaw, whose new trial began last November, decided to represent himself, having dismissed his lawyers not long after the retrial began.
He had taken the witness stand, where he told the seven-member jury that he had bought the carbon monoxide for a lab experiment.
On May 22, 2015, Wong and Lily were found unconscious in their locked Mini Cooper which had pulled over on Sai Sha Road.
They died later in hospital.
According to the post-mortem report, the duo were found to have died due to carbon monoxide inhalation.
A yoga ball filled with the lethal gas and placed in the car’s boot was identified as the source of the poisoning.
Earlier reports revealed in the days prior to the deaths, Khaw had ordered his assistants to acquire the gas.
He then filled two yoga balls with it, apparently for lab test purposes, but later took them home.
Dr Khaw claimed during the initial trial that he had planned to use the gas for pest control.
He also asserted that he did not place the yoga ball in the vehicle, suggesting that the death of his wife and daughter was accidental and not intentional.
During the earlier trial, it was also reported that the issue of Dr Khaw and Wong’s troubled marriage as well as an extramarital affair he allegedly had with a student were raised.
Dr Khaw had served as an associate professor at Chinese University of Hong (CUHK)’s department of anaesthesia and intensive care in addition to an earlier stint as a senior medical officer at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin.
He has three other children, two daughters and a son.
It is learnt that their eldest daughter, 22, was studying medicine in Malaysia, while their third daughter, 15, and son, 14, were both studying in Hong Kong schools during the time of the murders.
