Psychosis impaired teen’s understanding he was taking a life in Bandar Utama school murder, court says, rejecting months‑long planning claim

The Shah Alam High Court found the accused's psychotic illness impaired his understanding, ruling the murder was influenced by delusions rather than planned intent.

Judge Adlin Abdul Majid noted the prosecution's argument that the accused's actions were deliberate was invalidated by psychiatric evidence showing a detachment from reality.

The case underscores the importance of recognising mental illness in children, as early symptoms were overlooked, leading to tragic consequences for two families.

PETALING JAYA, Sept 23 — The Shah Alam High Court rejected claims that the 16-year-old schoolgirl’s murder in Bandar Utama last year was planned for months, finding that the accused’s psychotic illness impaired his understanding of the act and that the alleged “plan” stemmed from his delusions.

In her full written grounds, Judge Adlin Abdul Majid said she could not accept that merely knowing he was pushing a knife into the deceased’s abdomen and that it would cause her to bleed was sufficient to establish that the accused understood the nature of the act.

She added that an accused who has knowledge of the mechanics but not of the reality of what he is doing cannot be said to know the nature of the act.

“The nature of an act of homicide is not exhausted by its physical character. It must include the fact that the object of the act is a living human being with an existence independent of the actor, and that what is being destroyed is a real life, in the real world, permanently,” she said.

Adlin noted that a psychiatric report prepared by Dr Ian Lloyd Anthony, director and senior consultant forensic psychiatrist at Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta, recorded that the accused, through immersion in video games, came to view all persons as “NPCs” — useless, monotonous and computer-controlled characters lacking independent thought.

“He applied that label to students and teachers at the school, to his own parents and to society as a whole.

She also said the report recorded that due to the multitude of intense psychotic symptoms, the accused was transported into a world of fiction and fantasy, detached from reality, in a parallel world inhabited only by himself and the deceased.

“DW2 (Dr Ian) described delusional atmosphere and delusional memory as primary delusions, which are rare and are indicative of extremely severe psychosis.

“A primary delusion is not a mistaken inference drawn from experience. It is a direct, unmediated alteration in the way reality itself presents.

“It cannot be reasoned with, because it is not the product of reasoning,” she said.

Nevertheless, Adlin said the most telling piece of evidence supporting this finding is that the accused did not grasp the finality of death and believed that the deceased would be reincarnated.

“From this evidence, I am satisfied that the child’s psychotic illness had, at the material time, deprived him of the capacity to comprehend that he was taking the life of a living person, as opposed to enacting a fantasy upon an object of his own delusional construction.

“Accordingly, I am satisfied on a balance of probabilities that at the time of the Incident, by reason of unsoundness of mind, the child did not have the capacity to know the nature of the act he committed,” she said.

Prosecution challenge

On the prosecution’s argument that the accused’s delusions were simply a reason or motive for the killing, Adlin disagreed, finding that the delusions did not just give him a reason to kill but affected his ability to understand that what he was doing was wrong.

“Rather, it is the delusions themselves, and the associated dissociative state, that deprived him of that appreciation,” she said.

She also rejected the prosecution’s contention that the accused’s months-long planning showed he had the ability to organise, sequence and adjust his actions.

“The evidence establishes that every material element of the ‘plan’ relied upon by the prosecution was itself generated within and by the delusional system, rather than by rational, self-interested deliberation directed at a real-world objective.

“The target was selected not by reason of any relationship, dispute, or rational motive, but by an erotomanic delusion attaching to a girl whom, as the evidence established, the child had never once spoken to or otherwise contacted,” she said.

Adlin noted that the original date of the planned killing was also fixed to coincide with the anniversary of an atrocity committed 25 years earlier in another country by two young men whom the accused had come to identify with through his illness.

In addition, writings on the knives were made at the instruction of a hallucinated voice he attributed to Dylan Klebold, while the clothing was assembled piece by piece to replicate that worn by the Columbine High School shooting perpetrators.

None of this, the judge said, reflected the conduct of a rational, self-interested actor but rather the enactment of a delusional identification that had consumed the child’s inner life.

She also said the accused’s failure to plan an escape, dispose of evidence, or evade capture after the incident was more consistent with, and positively explained by, the psychiatric evidence that his actions were driven by psychosis.

“A plan which was meticulously prepared as to matters of costume and inscription, yet totally indifferent to detection, risk and escape, is not, in my assessment, the plan of a rational, guilt-aware mind,” she said.

She also dismissed the prosecution’s argument that the accused’s stalking of the deceased showed focused, deliberate and non-random targeting inconsistent with a psychotic attack.

“Based on DW2’s unrebutted evidence, sustained and specific attention to a single object of fixation, over a period exceeding a year and in the complete absence of any real encounter or exchange between the child and the deceased, is a recognised feature of erotomanic delusion,” she said.

Adlin also accepted Dr Ian’s evidence that a person can experience severe psychosis while still being able to carry out simple, everyday tasks, rejecting the prosecution’s argument that the accused’s normal behaviour on the day showed he was aware of what was happening around him and therefore could not be considered legally insane.

She also rejected the prosecution’s argument that the severity and repeated nature of the attack showed the accused deliberately intended to kill the victim and ensure she had no chance of being rescued.

“From DW2’s evidence, the violence inflicted on the deceased went well beyond what was needed to cause death, and served no purpose.

“This fact together with the disparity between the number of injuries and the child’s recollection of them supports the finding that the child’s mind was overwhelmed by psychosis and dissociation at the time of the incident.

She said the same detached state continued after the incident, with the accused seen calmly walking through the chaos of alarms and screams, stopping to retrieve and drink from his water bottle while still holding the knife.

“This event corroborates, rather than undermines, the account of dissociation during the act itself,” she said.

Untimely and tragic death

Adlin also said that her decision to acquit and discharge the accused did not make the deceased’s death any less devastating or real because it was caused by illness rather than malice.

She stressed that despite finding the accused committed the act but was not criminally responsible due to unsoundness of mind, the decision should not diminish the value of the deceased’s life or cause anyone to forget her.

“This is not a finding that the act did not happen, or that no one was responsible for it.

“It is a finding that the person who committed the act was at the time in the grip of a serious psychotic illness that had gone unrecognised and untreated for years, and that the law does not hold such a person criminally responsible for conduct he could not, at that moment, appreciate as wrong,” she said.

Noting that the deceased was a young student with close family and friends and a bright future ahead of her, Adlin said her untimely death was an immense and irreversible loss, stressing that her family’s grief was not diminished by the accused’s diagnosis and that the judgment did not ask them to see it that way.

Instead, Adlin said the case highlighted how far serious mental illness can progress in a child without being noticed by those around him, and how serious the consequences can be.

“Here, symptoms of a very early-onset and ultimately extremely severe psychotic illness were present from the age of nine, documented over five years in family accounts, school records and teachers’ observations, yet never once recognised as an illness.

“The signs were there: withdrawal, delusional thinking, a refusal to remove his mask, chronic lateness born of fear and hallucinated voices.

“They were read, understandably, as behavioural or disciplinary problems rather than as a medical emergency. The cost of that misreading has now been borne by two families,” she said.

She said if any good could come from the tragedy, it was for parents, schools, the courts and the wider public to better understand the signs and consequences of untreated mental illness in children.

“...So that symptoms are recognised and treated earlier, and never again permitted to progress unaddressed, to a point of such devastating consequence so that other families may be spared what both these families have suffered.

“It is in this spirit that this decision was made,” she said.

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沙阿南高等法院认定被告的精神病损害了他的理解能力，裁定谋杀是受妄想影响而非预谋所致。

法官阿德林·阿卜杜勒·马吉德指出，检方关于被告行为是故意的论点被精神病学证据推翻，该证据表明被告脱离了现实。

该案例凸显了识别儿童精神疾病的重要性，因为早期症状被忽视，导致两个家庭遭受悲剧性的后果。

八打灵再也，9月23日讯——莎阿南高等法院驳回了被告关于去年在万达镇发生的16岁女学生谋杀案是经过数月策划的说法，认为被告的精神病损害了他对犯罪行为的理解，所谓的“计划”源于他的妄想。

在她的完整书面理由中，法官阿德琳·阿卜杜勒·马吉德表示，她不能接受仅仅知道自己正在将刀插入死者的腹部，并且这将导致她流血，就足以证明被告理解该行为的性质。

她补充说，如果被告人了解犯罪手段，但不了解自己行为的实质，就不能说他了解犯罪行为的性质。

“杀人行为的本质不仅仅在于其物质特征。它还必须包含这样一个事实：行为的对象是一个活生生的人，其存在独立于行为者；被摧毁的是真实世界里的真实生命，而且是永久性的，”她说道。

阿德林指出，由巴哈吉亚乌鲁金塔医院院长兼高级顾问法医精神病学家伊恩·劳埃德·安东尼博士撰写的精神病学报告记录道，被告通过沉迷于电子游戏，将所有人都视为“NPC”——无用、单调且受电脑控制的角色，缺乏独立思考。

“他把这个标签贴在了学校的学生和老师身上，贴在了他自己的父母身上，也贴在了整个社会身上。

她还表示，报告记录显示，由于被告出现了多种严重的精神病症状，他被带入了一个虚构和幻想的世界，脱离了现实，进入了一个只有他自己和死者居住的平行世界。

“DW2（伊恩博士）将妄想氛围和妄想记忆描述为原发性妄想，这很罕见，并且表明存在极其严重的精神病。

“原发性错觉并非从经验中得出的错误推论，而是对现实本身呈现方式的直接、未经中介的改变。”

“它无法用理性来解释，因为它不是理性的产物，”她说。

然而，阿德林表示，支持这一结论的最有力证据是，被告没有理解死亡的终结性，并相信死者会转世重生。

“根据这些证据，我确信，在当时，这名儿童的精神病使他丧失了理解自己正在夺走一个活人的生命，而不是在对自己妄想构建的对象实施幻想的能力。

“因此，根据可能性权衡，我确信，事发时，由于精神不健全，该儿童没有能力了解他所实施行为的性质，”她说。

检方质疑

控方认为被告的妄想只是杀人的原因或动机，阿德林对此表示反对，认为妄想不仅给了他杀人的理由，而且影响了他理解自己所做的事情是错误的能力。

“更确切地说，是妄想本身以及与之相关的分离状态，剥夺了他这种欣赏能力，”她说。

她还驳斥了检方的说法，即被告长达数月的计划表明他有能力组织、安排和调整自己的行动。

“证据表明，检方所依赖的‘计划’的每一个实质性要素本身都是由这个妄想的体系内部产生的，而不是由旨在实现现实世界目标的理性、自利的深思熟虑产生的。

她说：“选择这个目标并非出于任何关系、纠纷或理性动机，而是因为对一个女孩产生了色情妄想，而证据表明，这名儿童从未与这个女孩说过话或以其他方式接触过。”

阿德林指出，原定的杀戮日期也与 25 年前在另一个国家发生的一起暴行的周年纪念日重合，这起暴行是由两名年轻人犯下的，被告因患病而对他们产生了认同感。

此外，刀上的文字是按照他所认为的迪伦·克莱伯德的幻觉声音的指示写成的，而衣服则是一块一块地拼凑起来，以模仿科伦拜恩高中枪击案凶手所穿的衣服。

法官说，这一切都不是理性、自私的行为，而是孩子内心世界中被妄想认同所吞噬的结果。

她还表示，被告在事件发生后未能计划逃跑、销毁证据或逃避抓捕，这与精神病学证据更加吻合，也得到了精神病学证据的积极解释，即他的行为是由精神病所驱动的。

“在我看来，一个在服装和铭文方面都经过精心准备，却对被发现、风险和逃脱完全漠不关心的计划，并非出自一个理性、有罪意识的人之手。”她说道。

她还驳斥了检方的论点，即被告跟踪死者的行为表明其是有针对性的、蓄意​​的、非随机的目标，这与精神病发作不符。

“根据DW2提供的未被反驳的证据，在一年多的时间里，持续且专门地关注单一的迷恋对象，并且孩子与死者之间完全没有任何真正的接触或交流，这是色情妄想的一个公认的特征，”她说。

阿德林还接受了伊恩医生的证词，即一个人即使患有严重的精神病，仍然能够完成简单的日常任务。他驳斥了控方的论点，即被告当天的正常行为表明他意识到周围发生的事情，因此不能被认定为法律意义上的精神错乱。

她还驳斥了检方的论点，即袭击的严重性和反复性表明被告蓄意杀害受害者，并确保她没有获救的机会。

“根据 DW2 的证词，对死者施加的暴力远远超过了致死所需的程度，而且没有任何目的。

“这一事实，加上受伤人数与孩子对受伤情况的回忆之间的差异，支持了这样一种结论：事发时，孩子的精神状态被精神病和分离状态所控制。

她说，事件发生后，被告仍然保持着这种冷漠的状态，他冷静地穿过一片混乱的警报和尖叫声，停下来拿起水瓶喝水，手里还拿着刀。

“这一事件证实了，而不是否定了，在性行为过程中出现的解离现象，”她说。

英年早逝，令人惋惜

阿德林还表示，她决定宣告被告无罪释放，但这并不会减轻死者的死亡带来的毁灭性打击或真实性，因为死者是因疾病而非恶意所致。

她强调，尽管认定被告犯下了罪行，但由于精神不健全而无需承担刑事责任，但这一决定不应降低死者生命的价值，也不应导致任何人忘记她。

“这并不是说该行为没有发生，或者没有人应该为此负责。”

“调查结果显示，实施犯罪行为的人当时患有严重的精神病，这种疾病多年来一直未被发现和治疗，而法律不会让这样的人对其当时无法理解为错误的行为承担刑事责任，”她说。

阿德林指出，死者是一位年轻的学生，有亲密的家人和朋友，前途光明，她的英年早逝是巨大的、不可挽回的损失，并强调被告的诊断结果并不会减轻她家人的悲痛，判决也没有要求他们这样看待这件事。

阿德林表示，该案例凸显了严重的精神疾病在儿童身上发展到何种程度而不被周围的人察觉，以及由此造成的后果有多么严重。

“在这里，患者从九岁起就出现了非常早发且最终极其严重的精神病症状，这些症状在五年多的时间里都有家庭记录、学校记录和教师观察记录，但却从未被认定为一种疾病。

“种种迹象表明他出现了以下症状：退缩、妄想、拒绝摘下面具、因恐惧而长期迟到以及出现幻听。

“可以理解的是，人们把这些情况解读为行为或纪律问题，而不是医疗紧急情况。如今，这种误判的代价已经由两个家庭承担了，”她说。

她说，如果这场悲剧能带来任何好处，那就是让家长、学校、法院和广大公众更好地了解儿童未治疗的精神疾病的迹象和后果。

“……这样就能及早发现和治疗症状，不再让病情发展到如此严重的程度而不加以处理，从而使其他家庭免受这两个家庭所遭受的痛苦。

“正是本着这种精神，我们做出了这个决定，”她说。

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