A man committed suicide after killing his wife with a knife on Sunday during an argument that ensued when he returned home drunk from a night of watching kickboxing, Police in Takeo province said Monday.
Sem Sun, police chief in Kiri Vong district’s Ang Prasat commune, said Monday that Sreng Ra, 43, returned to the tarpaulin tent his family was temporarily living in on their duck farm at about 10 p.m. after watching kickboxing on television at a nearby shop.
Mr. Sun said the couple’s 14-year-old daughter told police that her mother, Saing Pov, also 43, started arguing with her father, blaming him for never helping out with farm work. He said the teenager told them that her parents had argued often.
“The wife might have cut her husband first on his thighs, then the husband grabbed the knife and cut her throat,” he said.
The police chief said that their daughter ran to a neighbor for help, and that when the neighbor went to the house, he saw Sreng Ra holding the knife and his wife bleeding from the throat on the ground but still alive. The neighbor then left the scene to find more help, but when he returned with a group, the husband was lying dead outside the tent and his wife had also died, he said.
“He killed himself while the neighbor ran to get more people to help,” Mr. Sun said. “His wife cut him twice on his thighs, but he was only injured and did not die yet. But he stabbed himself in the belly outside the tent.”
Mr. Sun said Sreng Ra asked the neighbor who first arrived at the scene to help save his wife and speculated that he killed himself after she died.
He said the couple also had a 1-year-old and a 17-year-old daughter, who was away for work. He said Saing Pov’s sister had taken in the two younger children.
