Nguyen Ngoc Giau (top right) stabbed Cho Wang Keung in the common corridor outside his fifth-floor Ang Mo Kio Ave 3 flat shortly before 1am on July 15, 2021. - LIANHE ZAOBAO FILE, SHIN MIN DAILY NEWS READER, WANG KEUNG CHO/FACEBOOK
SINGAPORE: A 43-year-old woman who fatally stabbed her boyfriend after suspecting that he had been drinking with a beer promoter was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder on Tuesday (Oct 7), in what a High Court judge called a “tragic case of love gone wrong”.
Nguyen Ngoc Giau, a Vietnamese national and Singapore permanent resident, stabbed Cho Wang Keung, 51, in the common corridor outside his fifth-floor Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3 flat shortly before 1am on July 15, 2021.
When police officers arrived at the scene, they found her sitting down in the corridor with Cho sprawled on her.
Both had multiple stab wounds. They were taken to the hospital separately and Cho was pronounced dead at about 7.15am that day.
In a murder trial that began in April, the defence contended that Giau was too intoxicated at the time to have intended to fatally stab him, and that Cho’s death was the result of a sudden fight between the couple.
These defences were rejected by Justice Dedar Singh Gill.
The judge sentenced Giau to imprisonment for life after the prosecution said it was not seeking the death sentence for her.
After the verdict, the slim-built woman asked the judge through an interpreter if she could appeal. He replied that she could discuss it with her lawyer.
In a written judgment explaining his decision to convict her of murder, the judge said: “While I acknowledge that the accused was intoxicated at the material time, her intoxication was not so severe as to prevent her from forming the intention to inflict the fatal wounds.
“The evidence instead portrays someone who remained capable of forming specific intentions and acting upon them in a rational and calculated manner.”
The judge added that the sudden-fight contention rested “largely on speculation and attempts to draw multiple successive inferences from circumstantial evidence”.
Crucially, Giau herself never mentioned in any of her statements to the police that a fight broke out between them, he said.
Justice Gill noted that the relationship between Giau and Cho was fraught with frequent quarrels and fights.
“In this mix entered a female beer promoter. This ignited suspicion and anger. A life has been needlessly lost,” he said.
Giau had moved into Cho’s flat in July 2020 as a tenant, and initially slept in the living room.
But by October that year, she began sharing a bedroom with Cho, a jewellery assembler.
Another tenant, Tan Cheng Mun, occupied another bedroom.
The fatal stabbing followed a dispute that arose after Cho had some friends over at the flat for drinks after dinner on July 12, 2021.
The prosecution contended that Giau became upset with one of the friends, a female beer promoter whom she had previously seen sitting on Cho’s lap.
She locked Cho out of their bedroom on the following night.
On July 14, 2021, she tried to call him more than 30 times throughout the day.
At about 8.55pm, she texted him “446 good”, referring to the coffee shop where the beer promoter worked because she suspected Cho had gone there to drink with the woman.
Her calls and messages went unanswered.
When Cho and Tan returned to the flat past midnight, on July 15, 2021, they were confronted by Giau in the common corridor.
She questioned him about where he had gone to drink and recorded a video of the confrontation on her mobile phone.
When he ignored her and tried to move away, she grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him back.
Cho then asked Tan to call the police.
While the call was being made, Giau told Cho not to “be overboard as a person” before returning to the flat and ending the recording.
She retrieved a knife she had sharpened earlier that day, and stabbed Cho several times in the common corridor.
When she saw Tan taking photos of the assault, she turned her attention to him and he fled down the stairs.
The prosecution also contended that Giau subsequently stabbed herself. - The Straits Times/ANN
