Singapore — A man who was doing the laundry at home could not find the scoop that measures out the detergent to put in the washing machine. He asked the eldest of his sons if he had hidden the scoop. Being questioned like this angered the teenager, who already had a difficult relationship with his father, whom he felt was too strict and controlling.

The father would stop him from using his mobile phone and playing video games, to which he was addicted. He would make the boy do housework and push him to do his homework, reports yahoo!news If the boy didn’t obey, the father would hit him and swear at him, although he did not injure him.

The teenager, then 14, had been thinking about killing his father since June 2020 when his father banned him from playing video games for a month.

On Dec 11, 2020, he overheard his father tell the younger boy that his brother had thrown the scoop away. This enraged the teenager that he decided to act on his wish to kill his father.

In the kitchen, he chose a fruit knife with a 9.5 cm-long blade, over a bigger knife. When his father again confronted him over the missing scoop, he denied it once more and went to his room and brooded over the incident.

When he emerged, his father and brother were squatting in the laundry area, and the teenager stabbed his father once in the neck. “He then threw the knife in the sink, and locked himself in the bedroom as his father screamed,” reported yahoo!news.

The father staggered to a chair and sat there bleeding, as the younger son called an ambulance, and called his mother who was at work. The teenager told his father he was sorry and tried to help staunch the bleeding, but the father collapsed and became unconscious.

Paramedics could not revive the man, who was taken from the family’s condo in Loyang to Changi General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The teenager was arrested by the police later the same day after admitting that he stabbed his father.

In the Supreme Court on Monday, the court heard that the teenager had been diagnosed with a gaming addiction several years earlier. The boy pleaded guilty to culpable homicide and will serve five years detention. Under the Children and Young Persons Act, neither the boy nor his family members can be identified.

Justice Aedit Abdullah said he hopes he’ll contribute to society and his family when he ends his detention.

When he was a toddler, the teen was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and attended a special needs school in Primary 1.

In 2018, he was also diagnosed with a gaming addiction and had undergone counselling and therapy for it.

The Straits Times reported that this is the first sentencing under a provision in the Children and Young Persons Act someone involved in a case of murder, culpable homicide, attempted murder or causing grievous hurt is allowed to be detained. He will stay at the Singapore Boy’s Home until finishing his O-levels, and then be moved to jail and attend school there. 

A psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health has assessed his risk for violent re-offending to be low.

Defence lawyer Shashi Nathan told the court that after the stabbing, the teenager’s brother stopped speaking for some time, and their mother was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the teenager was arrested.

The lawyer urged the court to show compassion, saying that for the family, “It was one tragedy after another. I think both sides recognised that this is an extremely tragic case (that) decimated the family.”

“One has no doubt that a great burden of regret will remain on the accused and the surviving family members for the rest of their lives.

But even amid that sadness, the law must still be vindicated by the courts, findings made and punishment imposed.”

/TISG

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