His Father’s Killer
THERE’S NO DOWNPLAYING the seriousness and heinous nature of murder, but this particular case doesn’t stand out for being particularly horrific in terms of raw brutality. What does warrant feature is the fact that it involves a son killing his own father, and that the killer suffers from schizophrenia.
Mental health authorities have taken pains to assure the general public that contrary to popular belief, people with schizophrenia are not dangerous, unpredictable and out of control. For the most part, this is an educated and reasonable expectation. However, treatment for schizophrenia requires long-term commitment from both the patients and their families; one that is not the easiest to adhere to. In Ho Wei Yi’s case, resistance to accepting treatment led to his schizophrenia becoming more severe, which in turn amplified his resentment and paranoia that eventually culminated in him killing his own father.
The younger of two sons, Ho Wei Yi was generally respectful of his father as a boy, and was not known to argue with Ho Shiong Chun, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor for the last three decades. The younger Ho’s behaviour changed as he grew older and he was first admitted into the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in December 2003 after suffering a psychotic episode. He was just 23.
Although he was well enough to be discharged a month later in January, his condition relapsed after he stopped taking his antipsychotic medication, in a pattern that would be repeated with deadly consequences. That same year, Ho underwent six sessions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) at Adam Road Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital. ECT involves passing electric shocks through the brain and is generally administered when medication alone is found to have diminished efficacy. The ECT sessions were complemented by follow-up treatment at the IMH, which put Ho on antipsychotic medication.
This combination of treatments would keep Ho’s condition under control — for a while at least, as long as he continued to stay on the medication. From 2006, he stopped taking his medication and his mental condition deteriorated, and from 2008, this hardened into increasingly hostile and violent behaviour at home towards his family. In particular, he was especially resentful towards his aged parents for making him undergo ECT against his will.
The Ho family had lived in their McNair Road executive flat for more than 20 years, and as Ho’s condition got worse, neighbours would hear frequent quarrels coming from their unit. One of the most serious incidents occured in the early hours of the morning on 2 July 2009. Ho was unemployed at the time, and was incensed by his father’s remark that other mental patients who took psychiatric medication and underwent ECT could still work. He turned aggressive and tried to physically force his father to swallow one of his old psychiatric pills, and hit the latter on the head in the process, which resulted in a cut above the eyebrows.
Ho’s mother, who had been sleeping, was awoken by the commotion. When she tried to break up the fight, she too was hit in the face by Ho, who also tried to swing a plastic chair at her, causing a large bruise on her face. Fearing for their safety, the elderly couple ran out of the house and called the police.
When the police arrived, Ho barricaded the main door so the police could not enter. After speaking to him briefly, the police were somehow satisfied that Ho posed no serious threat and left the scene, while the couple spent the rest of the night at a relative’s place. Later that morning, when the couple returned to their flat, Ho again tried to force his father to swallow his psychiatric medicine. To placate her son, Mrs Ho offered to take the pill instead. But after her son put a pill in her mouth, he kicked his mother in the pelvic region, forcing his parents to flee the flat once again.
That day, Mr and Mrs Ho saw their son’s psychiatrist about this incident, and went to the Family Court to apply for a Personal Protection Order against him.
On 5 August 2009, around a month after the above incident, Ho and his parents were attending a counselling session at the Family Court when Ho discovered that his mother had kept several medical reports documenting his violent behaviour against her. This created an issue which was slated for further discussion at a later counselling session two weeks later. Ho and his parents then returned home separately.
But the matter continued to bother Ho greatly, and that evening at around 6pm, he demanded to see the reports. Ho took all the reports and went through them one by one, and crumpled them up. Observing his behaviour, Mrs Ho felt apprehensive that her son looked “not himself ” and “angry”. Afraid that her son would turn violent again, she left the house.
When she returned to the flat at 8.15pm to get her handbag and keys, she saw her husband alone in the house. But she was still afraid and left the house anyway. That was the last time she saw her husband alive.
According to investigations, Ho had left the house just after 7pm and took the MRT from Boon Keng station to Dhoby Ghaut, from which he travelled to Chinatown, before heading back to Boon Keng at around 9.30pm. From closed-circuit televison (CCTV) footage at the block, Ho was seen taking the lift up to his parents’ flat on the 11th floor at 9.52pm.
At home, he lit a fire in the master bedroom while his father was in the room. He then left the flat after padlocking the door. CCTV footage showed him taking the lift down at about 10.05pm. He had been in the house for barely 15 minutes.
At about 9.55pm (a little after Ho was seen taking the lift up to the flat), the police received a call from his father Ho Shiong Chun’s mobile phone: “Police please come, I being beaten (sic).” Minutes later, at 10.02pm, he made a second call to the police bidding them to come immediately. Ho might have beaten his father to a state where the latter’s movements were impaired, such that he could not escape in time or do something about the fire spreading rapidly from his bed.
At 10.05pm, around the time Ho was taking the lift down, the police arrived at the unit but received no response when they knocked on the door. They soon smelt smoke coming out of the unit and tried to force the door open but found the front gate padlocked.
The police managed to push the main door ajar and discovered the flat enveloped in thick black smoke. The unit was in total darkness. They also spotted flames, more than a metre high, emerging from the bedroom.
Firefighters from the SCDF arrived at 10.11pm, and after breaking the padlock and putting out the fire, they found the elder Ho lying face down in the corner of the toilet adjoining the master bedroom. At 11.55pm, Ho Shiong Chun was pronounced dead. An autopsy carried out the following day placed the cause of death as “inhalation of fire fumes”.
By the quick action of the SCDF, the fire did not spread beyond the flat to adjoining units and there were no casualties other than the deceased.
To apprehend Ho Wei Yi, the police worked out a list of his habitual haunts after interviewing his family members, and despatched plainclothes policemen to these locations. Just a day after the deadly fire, at about 9.45am on 6 August, Ho was spotted exiting the ground floor restroom in Velocity Shopping Centre along Thomson Road. He was promptly arrested.
After his arrest, Ho had very limited mental capacity to cooperate in the investigations. A series of medical reports was filed regarding Ho’s mental state, wavering between affirming his mental fitness to plead and stand trial, and otherwise. It wasn’t until 2012 that a statement obtained from him was used in court. Here, his account of the events leading up to his father’s death was markedly different than the version described above.
On the fateful night, Ho claimed to be hearing voices in his head. Poisonous gas was blowing at him from the master bedroom and his father was shouting for help from inside. He traced the source of the voices to the bed in the master bedroom, and to exorcise it of the evil spirits dwelling inside, he took two pieces of paper from the living room and set them alight on the bed with a kitchen stove lighter.
As the fire grew, so did the voices, becoming louder and scarier. In a panic, he ran out of the house, but not before padlocking the main gate. He told the court he knew his father was still in the room, but made no effort to evacuate him. He even thought about going back to extinguish the fire he had started, but knew his father had called the police and was afraid he would be arrested for arson.
It took years of detention and psychiatric treatment before Ho was fit to stand trial. At his sentencing hearing on 13 February 2014, for one charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, Ho faced a possible sentence of life imprisonment, or up to 20 years in jail with discretionary fine or caning. In a surprising turn, the prosecution actually presented a written appeal by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Whampoa, Heng Chee How, on behalf of Ho’s brother and sister-in-law, asking for the maximum sentence for Ho Wei Yi: “They hope that the brother will not get a lighter sentence as they are not able to support two mentally unwell persons. They also have a young son to look after. They said that the brother might pose a danger to the family and they are very worried.”
Ho Wei Yi’s mother had also been suffering from depression and was being cared for by Ho’s elder brother.
In his own defence, Ho submitted a handwritten note, stating that he now understood the severity and extremity of his mental illness, and that he could hurt himself or others if he did not take his medication daily and continue with his treatment. He also said that he believed he was no longer as foolish, proud and stubborn as before.
Ho’s mother, an uncle and aunt from his father’s side, as well as a cousin, pledged to the court that they would be responsible for providing for Ho and for ensuring that he got the medical care he needed, and to inform the authorities without delay if he should lapse from treatment.
Taking these into consideration, the judge sentenced Ho to eight years in jail, backdated to 2011 when he had been released from IMH after his arrest; while expressing his scepticism that Ho’s relatives who had stepped forward to vouch for him would be able to keep him in check: “The relatives who affirmed the affidavit pledging their support for the accused have good intentions and high hopes. However, I am not confident that they will be able to discipline the accused once he is a free man. The accused has proved that he is not a docile person. Even after his arrest, he could refuse to cooperate with the police unless he had legal representation. A man who had no fear of law enforcement officers while in custody does not appear to me to be someone who would placidly obey the persuasion of his kind relatives when he has liberty.”
It is likely that the story will not end here.