A Chinese restaurant owner in Sydney, Australia pleaded not guilty to the fatal stabbing of her husband during an argument involving abalone soup, claiming that it was accidental.
Qian Liu, 35, and her husband, Han Lim Chin, hoped to put their marital problems behind them and start fresh in 2016.
But just two days into the new year, the couple got into heated dispute that led to a knife buried deep in Chin’s chest. He died at age 39.
“I stabbed him. We argued and I was mad. Is there an ambulance coming?” Crown prosecutor Brad Hughes quoted Liu, who was charged with murder, as saying.
Inspector Paul Warden testified that those words came from Liu on the night of the incident, when he saw her on the floor cradling her husband at their granny flat in Riverwood, New South Wales.
“It’s alright, we had an argument,” he quoted Liu as saying when first asked about what happened, the Herald Sun noted.
The argument stemmed from Chin’s allegation that Liu was having an affair with her personal fitness trainer, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
In defense, barrister Phillip Boulten argued that Liu was not guilty of murder as she did not intend to kill Chin.
He said Liu grabbed the knife before Chin took it and accidentally wounded him during the struggle.
“It’s the defence case that the deceased was the person who armed himself with this knife and brought it into the equation,” Boulten told a NSW Supreme Court, which heard the case. “The accused’s husband has become very, very jealous, unreasonably so.”
Boulten claimed that Liu and her trainer were not having an affair.
“The deceased’s belief was based on next to nothing. He said in conversation with the accused, ‘Someone told me they saw you drive him to his house.’ He said to the accused and to her mother ‘Why is it that he gets abalone soup?’ There really isn’t much more to it than that,” he added.
The trial will continue to be held before Justice Clifton Hoeben.
Image via Flickr / City Foodsters (CC BY 2.0)
