Teenager who killed River Valley High schoolmate with axe appeals against sentence

Would have been a WPDcel in current year

However, the teenager began watching death videos in 2020, when Mr Chong said "there was no suggestion there was any underlying depression". Instead, it was the boy's own "misguided curiosity".

SINGAPORE: A teenager who was sentenced to 16 years in jail for killing his schoolmate with an axe at River Valley High School turned to the Court of Appeal on Monday (Jul 1) to seek a shorter prison term.

After hearing arguments for a full morning, the panel of three judges said they would take time to consider and would issue full findings in due course.

The young man, who turned 19 this year, cannot be named as he committed the offence when he was under the age of 18 and is protected under the Children and Young Persons Act.

He was 16 when he attacked 13-year-old Ethan Hun Zhe Kai in a school potty on Jul 19, 2021.

The appellant was sentenced in December 2023 for the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

At the Court of Appeal on Monday, he appeared in a white shirt, sported a buzz cut and had a sombre look on his face throughout proceedings.

His lawyers, Mr Sunil Sudheesan and Ms Joyce Khoo from Quahe Woo & Palmer, argued for his jail term of 16 years to be reduced to eight to 10 years instead.

Mr Sudheesan described the sentence as manifestly excessive and centred his arguments around his client's depression, which had resulted in two suicide attempts before the incident.

The lawyer said the teenager's decision on the day of the incident was "an irrational solution to his intention of suicide".

While some plan suicides around certain methods, the teenager's plan was to be killed by the police after the attack as he felt he was unable to take his own life, said Mr Sudheesan.

The appeal was heard by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justices Woo Bih Li and Belinda Ang.

CHIEF JUSTICE'S ISSUES WITH THE DEFENCE'S CASE

Chief Justice Menon told Mr Sudheesan that he was "struggling" with the lawyer's case, as the narrative of what happened, according to the statement of facts the teen pleaded guilty to, did not quite fit.

According to the statement of facts, the teen waited for students to leave, before preparing the potty and waiting for someone to enter.

After the victim - a random target - entered, the teenager put up tape to stop others from entering and proceeded to kill the boy.

"I mean that whole set of sequence of events does not suggest a picture of someone who was hoping to be confronted and apprehended and stopped," said the Chief Justice.

"On the contrary, it presents a picture of someone who was thinking about how to complete the act of killing, and it seems very much targeted at his plan towards taking the life of the victim, rather than anything to do putting himself in the way of law enforcement."

Chief Justice Menon pointed out a second issue that he found "rather troubling".

According to court documents, the teenager claimed he felt "catharsis and regret" after attacking the victim, and he decided to stop his plan of killing more people.

While the Chief Justice said it was "completely tragic" that a young person should feel that way in wanting to take his own life, he said he struggled to see what it was about his mental illness that was mitigating for his case.

In response, Mr Sudheesan explained that his client's plan to end his life was to attack someone in school and have the police kill him - therefore the steps taken to kill the victim were deliberate as planned.

However, after he killed the boy, he felt "catharsis and regret" and decided to stop his further plan of killing more people, said the lawyer.

As to the harm caused to the victim, the lawyer said he hated to use the term, but it was "collateral damage", and that the "poor victim was at the wrong place at the wrong time".

The defence lawyers said the teenager has been receiving treatment by taking anti-depressants daily since September 2021, with the dosage reduced after November 2022.

He also received psychotherapy sessions, attends religious fellowship and has religious counselling with a pastor, converting to Christianity while remanded.

His depression has been in remission since September 2022, a fact confirmed in June 2023, with no relapses since.

Mr Sudheesan said his client felt extremely remorseful for his actions, understanding that he has caused irreparable harm to Ethan's family.

He has expressed his remorse in a letter to Ethan's family.

"DISTURBING" POETRY

Chief Justice Menon said the sentencing judge had also referred to some poems written by the teenager that "disturbed" her and caused her to form the opinion that the poetry disclosed "a level of appeal" to the appellant to his form of dying.

In response, Mr Sudheesan said the psychiatrist did not weigh in on the contents of the poem, and that to say the poems show that school slashings appeal to the teen in the absence of an expert on the poems was "taking it too far".

The lawyer quipped that William Shakespeare had a line in his play Henry VI, Part 2, where he said "let's kill all the lawyers", but that did not necessarily mean this appealed to him.

"Well it might have, if he had gone and done that," responded the Chief Justice.

Justice Belinda Ang pointed out that the sentencing judge had named three major factors that contributed to the killing, and the appellant's major depressive disorder was only one of them.

The other two factors were his refusal to get external help, and his consumption of videos depicting scenes of human death at least half a year before the onset of the depression. Both of these were "matters well within his own control", according to the grounds of decision.

Amongst his replies, Mr Sudheesan said one cannot blame a 16-year-old for not getting help.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Kumaresan Gohulabalan and Andre Chong urged the court to dismiss the appeal.

They said the teenager did not dispute that the case - involving a killing of a student in a school in Singapore, is unprecedented and heinous.

"He accepts that the case involved a chilling degree of premeditation and cold logic in planning and preparing for the killing," wrote the prosecutors in their written arguments.

"He does not dispute that his diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) was but one of three factors that contributed to the killing. Nor does he dispute that, despite his MDD, he understood that what he was doing was morally and legally wrong, and retained control over his actions."

Mr Chong argued in person that the chronology that led to the appellant's depression was important. He described how it all started in 2019, abated in between with periods of "rebound", and was followed by a period in 2021 where his stress increased exponentially.

However, the teenager began watching death videos in 2020, when Mr Chong said "there was no suggestion there was any underlying depression". Instead, it was the boy's own "misguided curiosity".

In response, Mr Sudheesan said: "Depression is not like a tap. You can't turn it off. You can't turn it on. The depths of depression can grip hold of the best of us."

After the hearing ended, with judgment reserved, the appellant's family members crowded around him where he sat behind a wall of glass in the dock in handcuffs.

They pushed their fingers through the slit in the glass to hold his hands and spoke fervently to him until they had to leave.