Foreign Property News | Posted by Shwe Zin Win
Tan Qiu Yan was grieving her mother and suffered delusions, fearing that her father would kick her out of the flat and leave her homeless.
Angered that her adoptive father was refusing to share flat ownership with her after her mother died, a woman bought a chopper and hacked the 67-year-old man to death after he emerged from a shower.
Tan Qiu Yan, 33, was sentenced to 18 years' jail on Monday (Jul 14) after pleading guilty to culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
The Singaporean woman qualified for the partial defence of diminished responsibility, where the mental state of offenders reduces their responsibility for their criminal act.
This was because she suffered from a delusional disorder of a persecutory type, with a background of schizoid personality disorder at the time of the offence.
She was labouring under delusional beliefs against the backdrop of grief related to the death of her adoptive mother, who appeared to be her primary social support, the court heard.
People suffering from persecutory delusions typically hold the false belief that they are being obstructed, conspired against, attacked or harassed.
(WHAT HAPPENED) Tan was adopted as a child by Mr Tan Ah Bang and his wife. The family lived in a flat at Block 190A Rivervale Drive in Sengkang.
In 2019, Tan's adoptive mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Before she died, she promised Tan that she would leave her share of the flat to her, court documents stated.
After her death in August 2022, her share of the flat automatically passed to Mr Tan, who became the owner of the flat. During the funeral wake, Tan got into quarrels with her father over her mother's financial assets and ownership of the flat.
During one quarrel, he got angry and told his daughter that she had to move out of the flat. She then told her father that her mother had left the flat to her, and not to him, and began crying.
At this, Mr Tan relented and promised to transfer ownership of the whole apartment to his daughter. However, she did not trust her father and feared that he would eventually have the whole home to himself.
A few days after the funeral wake, she bought a chopper from a supermarket, selecting a larger one that was very sharp, thinking that it would be "more effective" in killing her father.
During this quarrel, Tan flung a cup and a jar of peanut butter to the ground. Her father cleaned up the mess and said he would not leave the flat to her when he died, but that he would donate it.
THE DAY OF THE KILLING
On Nov 3, 2022, Tan woke at around 8am and heard her father telling someone on the phone that it was not convenient to talk because his daughter was around.
Thinking that her father was "scheming" to get the flat, she called the law firm requesting to be added as owner of the flat, but was told that she could not.
She continued ruminating on whether to kill her father until lunchtime that day, when she received a card from a hospital signed by doctors offering condolences on her mother's death. She began crying as she read the card. After lunch, she returned to her bedroom where she practised using the chopper to slash the air and a banana. She found that the cut was clean and the blade was sharp.
She then checked on her father and found him lying on his front in his bedroom. She considered taking him by surprise, but grew scared because "she had never killed anyone before", the prosecution said.
She decided to give her father "one last chance". Later, she went to the toilet where he was scrubbing her work uniform and asked if he was willing to share the flat with her in a 50-50 ownership.
He angrily said that he would not and told her not to bring it up anymore.
At this, Tan made up her mind to kill him. She considered her options before deciding to catch him by surprise in the toilet.
That evening, the father cooked dinner and they ate together. She then waited for him to take a shower.
Once she heard the sound of running water, she removed her glasses so they would not fall or break in the attack and waited outside the toilet holding the chopper. At 8pm, when her father opened the door, she swung the weapon at him.
The man tried to say something, but she ignored him and hacked at him "at a very fast speed", aiming for his neck, the court heard.
After she hacked at her father five to 10 times, the man fell backwards, his hand grasping his daughter's hair. He landed in a sitting position near the sink and she continued attacking.
She could not tell where the chopper was landing because her father had not released his grip on her hair. He bit her finger, but she did not stop.
She sat cross-legged facing her father and hacked at him about 30 more times, finally stopping when she got tired. The entire attack had lasted about 10 minutes, according to her estimate.
She then cleaned up the toilet, threw away her bloodstained clothes, went to listen to music and looked at childhood photos of herself with her parents.
At about 5am on Nov 4, 2022, she began heading to Sengkang Police Station before it occurred to her that the police could come to her instead. She called the police and said that her father had died at home and asked them to head to the flat. She was arrested later that morning.
THE AFTERMATH
An autopsy certified Mr Tan's cause of death as bleeding due to incised wounds to the neck. He had suffered numerous deep incised wounds to his neck. Tan was assessed by the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) and found to be suffering from delusional disorder of a persecutory type, with a background of schizoid personality disorder.
