HCMC woman appeals against death penalty for murdering fiancé’s daughter

It is not known on what grounds Nguyen Vo Quynh Trang has appealed to the Family and Juvenile Court.

On November 25 the HCMC People’s Court gave Trang, 27, the death sentence for “murder,” while Nguyen Kim Trung Thai, 36, received three years for “torture” of the child and five years for “concealing a crime.”

Trang and Thai had lived together with his eight-year-old daughter for over a year since he divorced his former wife in 2020.

Trang frequently beat the girl and forced her to do chores, investigators found. Since rods broke due to her constant beatings, she switched to wooden implements.

Thai repeatedly refused to allow the biological mother to visit the girl.

On December 22 last year Trang beat the girl so badly she fainted. The girl was taken to hospital, but was declared dead on arrival. Her wounds and bruises prompted doctors to contact the police.

Autopsy results determined the girl had suffered a hematoma under the skin of her forehead, mild cerebral edema, and broken ribs.

Following her death, Thai deleted all the data from the cameras at his home.

But police managed to recover the footage, which revealed that on the day the child died, Trang had beaten her for hours on the arms and legs using sticks and bound her to a chair to “teach her a lesson.”

The police found that she had tortured the girl for four hours straight between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on the day she died.

During questioning Thai admitted to police he knew his girlfriend often used rods and sticks to beat his daughter, and claimed it was for “education” purposes.

Thai’s family did not consent to his marriage with Trang or having children, and so Trang took her anger out on Thai’s daughter, the jury said.

Trang’s action was thus particularly dangerous and “vile,” it said.

Meanwhile, the child’s mother has appealed against the jail sentence given to Thai and want him to be charged with “murder” as an accomplice of Trang.

In an appeal, she said: “Without his consent, Trang certainly would not have had the opportunity to beat the girl to death. So Thai must be responsible for the crime of murder.”