A Royal Cambodian Armed Forces captain fatally shot his wife Thursday night in Strung Treng province before turning the gun on himself, according to police.
The soldier, 24-year-old Phoeun Chinda, allegedly shot his wife in the head while she slept in a hammock on the balcony of their Stung Treng City home.
“The gunman then went into the house to tell his mother-in-law to look after their two-year-old son, since he had just killed his wife,” said Duong Sivoutha, chief of the provincial serious crimes police.
According to Mr. Sivoutha, Phoeun Chinda returned to the balcony minutes later, laid down next to his wife’s body and shot himself in the head. Police believe that jealousy was the motive for the murder.
“They didn’t argue on the day of the incident,” Mr. Sivoutha said. “But they argued a lot in the past. He would get jealous when his wife was with others.”
Despite national efforts to curb domestic violence, spousal abuse has become increasingly brutal and deadly in Stung Treng province, according to Hou Sam Ol, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc.
There have been several cases over the past two years in which women were harmed or brutally murdered by their enraged husbands, he said.
In June, for instance, a man poured five liters of gasoline on his wife’s back in an attempt to burn her alive. She managed to survive. But in another recent case, a man butchered his wife to death with a machete.
“This is one more brutal case where a husband killed his wife because of jealousy,” Mr. Sam Ol said of Thursday’s murder-suicide.
