Doctor on trial for yoga ball killings

A mother and daughter were rushed to hospital in Hong Kong after passersby noticed they had sat in a car unmoving for nearly an hour.

A witness later said it appeared that Wong Siewfung and her 16-year-old daughter had fallen asleep inside the car in the 2015 incident. They were pronounced dead at the hospital.

Prosecutors told Hong Kong’s High Court that autopsies revealed that the two died of carbon monoxide poisoning, though the gas did not appear to be leaking from the vehicle, reported the South China Morning Post.

It apparently came from a yoga ball in the trunk — which, prosecutors said, had been filled with the gas and placed there by Wong’s husband.

When police responded to the scene, the ball was lying deflated in the back of the vehicle.

According to the newspaper, prosecutor Andrew Bruce told the court that Khaw Kim-sun, a 53-year-old anesthesiologist, pumped carbon monoxide into the ball and put it into the vehicle in May 2015 as part of a plan to kill his wife but that “the last thing the accused wanted was for his 16-year-old to die.” Khaw apparently did not expect that his daughter would be in the car at the time.

Khaw, who is charged with two counts of murder, pleaded not guilty, according to BBC News. Prosecutors said Khaw, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was cheating on his wife with a student and his wife would not grant him a divorce, according to the Post.

So, the prosecutors said, Khaw, with help from his student, devised a plan to kill his wife.