Woman who fatally stabbed boyfriend in Ang Mo Kio gets life term for murder

A 43-year-old woman who fatally stabbed her boyfriend after suspecting that he had been drinking with a beer promoter was sentenced on Oct 7 to life imprisonment for murder, in what a High Court judge called a "tragic case of love gone wrong".

- Selina Lum Senior Law Correspondent

Nguyen Ngoc Giau, a Vietnamese national and Singapore permanent resident, stabbed Mr 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 in the corridor with Mr Cho sprawled on her.

Both had multiple stab wounds.

They were taken to the hospital separately and Mr 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 Mr Cho, and that his 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."