Mother murderer on meth gets life

Vu Van Tam, 33, received the sentence murder sentence on Monday after two years of mental health treatment in custody.

According to court documentation, Tam is a native of Tra Vinh Province in the Mekong Delta.

He came to Ho Chi Minh City in 2012 and rented a house where he lived and operated a vehicle repair garage to make a living.

In the city, he met a woman named Hieu and married her.

Around 2018, Hieu found out her husband was using drugs so she tried to talk him out of it. The couple, as a result, often quarreled.

They later separated for a while and Tam returned to his hometown to live with his single mother. Tam’s father left when he was a little boy and his mother had raised him and his two siblings on her own.

While staying with his mother, Tam learned that Hieu was pregnant with his child, so he returned to HCMC and resumed his business as a mechanic to take care of her.

In March that year, Hieu gave birth to twins and Tam’s mother came to HCMC to help the couple with the babies.

At that point, Tam was still a drug addict.

On April 16, 2019, during meth-induced hallucinations, he stabbed his own eye with an iron stick. His mother rushed him to the hospital and then took him back home after treatment.

The next night, Tam could not sleep and kept wandering around.

When his mother came to check on him, he took a knife, stabbed her to death and then ran to his neighbors’ houses to attack more people.

Locals took him down and called the police to arrest him.

According to the jury, Tam lost the ability to control his behaviors due to meth-induced insanity.

As concluded by the forensic examination agency, he is now in stable condition after two years of treatment and was totally capable of standing trial.