Woodcutter jailed 20 years for killing drinking buddy
KOTA KINABALU: A woodcutter has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for causing the death of his Filipino drinking buddy using a machete.
Sessions Court judge Ainul Shahrin Mohamed imposed the custodial sentence on Jun Ben, 62, after he maintained his guilty plea to the charge, yesterday.
The court also ordered him to serve the sentence from the date of his arrest and thereafter to be referred to the Immigration Department for his deportation back to the Philippines.
Jun had allegedly caused the death of one Bobit, 30, in the kitchen of a house in Kampung Longgom, Pitas at 8.30 pm on March 8.
The offence, under Section 304 (a) of the Penal Code, carries a jail term of up to 30 years and also liable to a fine, upon conviction.
In mitigation, Jun Ben, who was not represented, pleaded for leniency on the grounds that he has seven children to support and that he is not in good health.
Deputy public prosecutor, Hafizah Zahidah Abdullah, in reply said that although the accused has no previous criminal record, the offence committed was a grievous and a serious one. She said Jun Ben had inflicted slash wounds on the deceased, which according to the postmortem had led to the death of the victim.
Based on the facts of the case, the accused and the deceased were drinking ‘tapai’ (local alcoholic drink) together since 3 pm on March 8 at the house.
The wife of the victim who was sitting in the living room heard the conversation between the accused and the victim in which the victim claimed that he had sexual intercourse with the accused’s mother-in-law at a rubber plantation.
The accused became angry on hearing this and a fighting ensued, during which the victim grabbed a machete in the kitchen and attacked the accused with it.
The victim’s wife quickly exited the house through the front door and shouted for help.
After fending off the victim’s attacks, the accused managed to wrested the machete from the victim’s hand and chased after him in the kitchen with it.
Later, the accused came out from the kitchen and told the victim’s wife, who had returned with her two neighbours, that the victim was murdered by two people.
The accused then fled from the house and threw the machete in the nearby forest.
A neighbour called the police and when they came at about 9.30 pm, they found the deceased lying on the kitchen floor with slash wounds on the left part of his face, neck, stomach and leg.
When the ambulance arrived at 11 pm, the deceased was pronounced dead by a medical assistant.
The postmortem on the deceased confirmed that the cause of death was due to slash wounds at the front and left of the deceased’s neck which severed the main blood vessel and causing massive loss of blood and eventually his death.