The brutal murder of his girlfriend by a Chinese man before she fell from a Sydney unit block left the woman’s devastated family in immeasurable grief and pain, a court heard.
Weijie He stabbed student Liqun Pan, 19, in the southern Sydney suburb of Wolli Creek on June 27, 2020, before falling from the fourth floor of the apartment building.
An emotional statement from Ms Pan’s father was read in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Tuesday, as her killer listened dressed in a green prison uniform and sitting in a wheelchair.
“Our hope and happiness evaporated the moment his life was brutally taken,” Zewu Pan said in the statement, written in Mandarin but read to the court in English.
‘The news of his death brought devastation to our entire family.
Weijie He stabbed student Liqun Pan, 19 (pictured) in the southern Sydney suburb of Wolli Creek on June 27, 2020, before falling from the fourth floor of the apartment building.
‘The immeasurable pain crushed everyone. “We couldn’t accept that it was true.”
Coming from a farming family in Guangdong province, Ms Pan moved to Australia to study English.
His family supported his desire to get a better education, the court heard.
But the life of this kind, intelligent and conscientious woman was cut short with her brutal murder.
‘Why is God so unfair to her?’ her father said. ‘Why is God so cruel to us?’
As for the “cruel and heartless killer,” Pan said he hoped to see him rot in prison for the rest of his life.
“He must be made to pay for his evil.”
The court heard he was a regular user of nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, and consumed five boxes two days before the murder.
Defense lawyer Geoff Harrison argued that his client had experienced drug-induced psychosis at the time of the murder.
But forensic psychiatrist Adam Martin told the court the Chinese national had shown “a degree of control and coercive behaviour” towards Mrs Pan before the murder.
He argued with his girlfriend, believing she had a ‘sugar daddy’ and threatened to hit her if she didn’t complete his housework, according to agreed facts presented in court.
On one occasion, when she flew back to China, Ms. Pan signed a contract that she would not go to bars, drink alcohol or do anything with people of the opposite sex.
“Is it possible, doctor, that the murder had nothing to do with nitrous oxide?” asked Crown Prosecutor Rossi Kotsis.
“Yes,” Dr. Martin responded.
Weijie He stabbed student Liqun Pan, 19 (pictured) in the southern Sydney suburb of Wolli Creek on June 27, 2020, before falling from the fourth floor of the apartment building.
Judge Julia Lonergan will have to consider whether his moral culpability was reduced because of the alleged psychotic episode or whether he was simply intoxicated by laughing gas.
While he pleaded guilty to murder, his family had also trained the killer to deny it and claim he had amnesia.
In December 2021, he told Martin that both he and Ms Pan had been wronged by “bad people”, who killed his girlfriend and threw him off the building.
The hearing continues.
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