April 14, 2021
A handout photo. The court was shown drawings by the victim at school.
South China Morning Post
A Hong Kong couple have been found guilty of murdering their five-year-old daughter three years ago in one of the city’s most horrifying cases of child abuse.
The girl’s 56-year-old step-grandmother was also convicted of two out of four counts of child cruelty.
A High Court jury of three men and four women on Tuesday (April 13) returned the verdicts after 10 hours of deliberations, following a month of heartbreaking testimony from family members, teachers and doctors.
Murder and manslaughter are both punishable by life imprisonment, while the cruelty charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
A Hong Kong woman on trial for neglecting her step-grandchildren was a “loving and caring” grandparent who did not know the full extent of the abuse that was happening in her flat until one of them died, a court heard on Thursday.
Defence counsel Chase Pun also argued that the 56-year-old accounting clerk had never used a rattan stick to hit the five-year-old girl, as well as her brother, eight, as alleged by the prosecution. Pun questioned if the two children were truly in her care at the time.
Closing the case on Thursday, Pun told the jury: “If you do not think she has custody of the children, you should find this loving and caring grandmother not guilty on all four charges.”