Lift horror as mother stabbed to death and daughter slashed by stranger

[MasterYoda]

Lift horror as mother stabbed to death and daughter slashed by stranger

Mentally ill stranger accosts family in lift of residential building and leaves mother dead, daughter slashed in apparently random attack

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 12 October, 2014, 6:04am
UPDATED : Sunday, 12 October, 2014, 6:04am

Danny Lee and Amy Nip

The family was attacked in the building's lift. Photo: Edmond So

Police arrested a man in connection with an apparently random attack in which a young mother was stabbed to death and her five-year-old daughter slashed across the face in a residential building's lift early yesterday.

The horror attack happened as a family was heading out from their 13th floor flat in Po Tat estate in Sau Mau Ping.

The attacker confronted the family of four and threw a flammable liquid thought to be alcohol on the father, who ran downstairs for help.

As the 37-year-old woman, surnamed Lo, ran into the lift with her two daughters, the attacker followed her, stabbing her repeatedly and slashing one of her daughters on the face with a long-bladed knife.

Wilson Tam Wai-chun, chief inspector of crime at the Sau Mau Ping district, described the weapon as "an eight-inch [20cm] fruit knife".Then, Tam said, "the suspect returned to his own flat where he attempted to torch himself."

A police source said the woman was believed to have sustained three stab wounds, "on the right side of the mouth, on the left shoulder near the neck and on the left upper arm".

She was rushed to the United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong, where she was certified dead.

Police collect evidence at the scene of the attack. Photo: SMP

Last night, as pools of blood stained the lobby and lift of the building, detectives examined closed-circuit television footage to piece together the moments leading up to the vicious attack.

Police said the suspect, a 72-year-old man surnamed Ng, and the family had no previous quarrels. Police confirmed that the man had a history of mental illness.

A knife and alcohol were seized as evidence at the scene and the suspect was later sent to Castle Peak psychiatric hospital.

Yesterday's stabbing follows a number of high-profile incidents involving people diagnosed with mental illness in the past two years.

In January 2012, a hospital declared a man mentally stable a few hours before he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He then went on to chop a security guard to death in Sheung Shui.

In December last year, a police constable drew his revolver to stop a mentally ill man from attacking a paramedic with a cleaver amid a violent rampage in a family flat that injured six people.

The city recorded 13 homicides in the first half of this year, down from 53 in the same time last year, when the total was 62.