Woman who stabbed ex-lover pleads guilty to attempted culpable homicide

SINGAPORE — The woman who stabbed her former girlfriend two years ago in a Geylang hotel after failed attempts to reconcile pleaded guilty yesterday to an amended charge of attempted culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

Giselle Shi Jia Wei now faces up to 15 years in jail and a fine. The 25-year-old’s initial charge of attempted murder carried the maximum sentence of life imprisonment or 20 years’ jail and a fine.

She consented for the second charge of attempted suicide to be stood down and taken into consideration during sentencing.

The trial had gone on for about six days — with Shi nearly due to take the witness stand — before yesterday’s development.

The version of events previously set out by defence lawyer K Jayakumar Naidu had been that Shi’s former girlfriend, Ms Ummul Qurratu ‘Ain Abdul Rahman, 22, was stabbed in their struggle for the knife when Shi wanted to kill herself.

The statement of facts read out after Shi pleaded guilty to the amended charge yesterday said her plan was to carry out a murder-suicide ploy if a final attempt to reconcile with her lover — with whom she had an unstable relationship — failed.

Hours after buying a knife from a supermarket, Shi asked Ms Ummul out for supper on July 22, 2012, before they checked into Golden Star Hotel in Geylang.

When Ms Ummul rejected her repeated pleas to continue their relationship, Shi grew desperate and frustrated. While straddling the victim’s thigh, she reached into her bag, took out the knife and plunged it into the victim’s chest twice.

The second stab did not pierce as deeply as the first, as Ms Ummul put up a struggle. She fell onto the aisle separating the two beds and blacked out for one to two minutes.

Shi then stabbed her own chest. When Ms Ummul regained consciousness and tried to leave the room, Shi prevented her from doing so.

Ms Ummul managed to escape only after she convinced Shi to let her go to the toilet, where Shi loosened her grip on the victim’s hands as she was slowly losing consciousness.

A Tan Tock Seng Hospital report stated that Ms Ummul’s injury would probably have caused death, had it not been treated.

Yesterday, Shi sobbed and looked to her parents in the public gallery as she pleaded guilty.

Justice Choo Han Teck is expected to sentence her next Friday.