Woman fatally stabbed husband in front of daughter before taking her own life: State Coroner

SINGAPORE - A woman armed herself with two knives and attacked her husband with them in front of their 14-year-old daughter.

The 35-year-old woman managed to stab her husband in the abdomen before falling to her death from their Tampines apartment on May 1 last year.

The 36-year-old man, who was the vice-president of a company here, was taken to Changi General Hospital (CGH) where he died of a haemorrhage due to stab wounds to his liver.

In an inquiry on Thursday (June 20) into the Filipino couple's death, State Coroner Kamala Ponnampalam found that the woman had fatally stabbed her husband before taking her own life.

The couple cannot be named due to a gag order to protect the identity of their daughter.

The man came to Singapore to work in 2006 before his wife and daughter joined him here two years later.

In her findings, the State Coroner said that according to the teenager, her mother was unhappy that her father often worked late. The couple would then quarrel and threaten to divorce each other.

In April last year, the woman told her daughter that the man had asked for a separation after an argument.

The girl stated that following this incident, her father was insistent on a divorce as he did not want his wife to call him every day and wished that she would be more understanding about his work schedule.

State Coroner Kamala said that the man's colleagues believed that he was intent on divorcing his wife and that he had contemplated moving to Canada to meet a friend whom he had met on an online gaming platform.

The girl was sleeping in her room on May 1 last year when she was woken at around 5.30am by the sound of her father screaming.

He then stumbled into her room with blood on his leg with her mother following closely behind with a knife in each hand.

The woman started stabbing her husband and the girl tried but failed to stop the attack.

The teenager called the police and was talking to an operator when her mother stabbed her father in the abdomen.

The woman subsequently stopped attacking her husband but began cutting her own wrist before going to the balcony of their home on the fifth storey of a Tampines condominium.

She was about to jump off when her daughter rushed forward to stop her.The woman then ran to the master bedroom and locked the door.

The girl was attending to her injured father when she heard a thud and police arrived soon after.

Officers later found the woman lying face up on a second-storey balcony and paramedics pronounced her dead at around 6.40am. Her husband was taken to CGH where he died at around 2pm that day.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.