Police arrest mother for killing her son in a suspected murder-suicide attempt

A Hong Kong mother has been arrested for allegedly murdering her son in a suicide bid in the early hours of Saturday.

Police have detained the 46-year-old woman on suspicion of strangling her 21-year-old son, who is believed to have an intellectual disability, inside their public housing flat in Kwai Chung Estate.

An assistant divisional commander, Lam Chi-yuen, said the victim just moved back with the family from a care home for intellectually disabled people.

He said three other family members, including the father, were in the flat when the mother murdered her son with a rubbish bag or plastic table cloth that had been rolled into a string.

But the family members were still too traumatized to calmly talk about the incident.

The mother is understood to have attempted to take her own life after killing his son, but paramedics arrived soon after police were called at 3 am, and she was taken to the hospital with an injured hand.

Officers did not reveal the current condition of the arrestee, or which hospital she had been sent to.

“From the information we have collected, we believe the victim was strangled. The tool for murder may be a stringlike object made from rubbish bags, or something like tablecloths,” Lam said.

He also denied earlier media reports that claimed the son had been given drugs before the incident, saying there was no evidence to support that.