The Svay Rieng Provincial Court has charged a woman who stabbed a moto-taxi driver while attempting to rob him after she gambled away a loan for her upcoming wedding, officials said Wednesday.
Khon Srey Dy, 20, a garment worker, was charged Saturday and is currently being held at the provincial prison, according to provincial court prosecutor Keang Suntharo.
“The suspect was charged with theft accompanied by violence because she stabbed the victim,” he said.
Keo Sotha, chief of the provincial police’s minor crimes bureau, said Ms. Srey Dy—who works at a factory in Bavet City’s Manhattan Special Economic Zone—was set to wed her fiance in January using money loaned to the couple by the groom’s family.
“After she lost all the money gambling at a casino in Bavet City, her mother asked where the money was, so she could start planning the wedding,” Mr. Sotha said, adding that he did not know the loan’s size.
“She told her mother she had loaned the money to a friend and would get it back soon, but really, she had a plan to rob a taxi driver of his motorbike to get the money back.”
Mr. Sotha said Ms. Srey Dy was at a market near her workplace in Bavet commune last Thursday when she hailed a moto-taxi and asked to be driven to a nearby factory compound in the Tai Seng Bavet SEZ.
Once there, she bought a knife from a local market and got back on the motorbike, telling the driver to go down an empty street in a quiet area of Prey Angkunh commune, he said.
“When the suspect pointed the knife into the victim’s back, he stopped the motorbike,” he said. “Then they began to fight and she stabbed him in the stomach.”
Mr. Sotha said a friend and a relative of the taxi driver, who saw the woman purchase the knife and became suspicious, reached the scene shortly after the attack and restrained Ms. Srey Dy until Bavet City police arrived and arrested her.
Kim Lai, chief of the provincial police’s serious crimes bureau, said the victim was recovering from his injuries at the provincial referral hospital.
“We don’t care that she was trying to get her wedding money back,” he said. “She committed a crime and seriously injured the victim.”
