SIBU: A second crime of passion has been reclassified as murder after the victim died.
In the first case, the reclassification was after widow Sharifah Maznah Wan Mohamad, 32, died after she was set ablaze by her ex-boyfriend. Sharifah Maznah was in a coma after sustaining second degree burns. She died while being treated in Sarawak General Hospital last Tuesday.
In the second case where a group of boys attacked three men, the charge of causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons was reclassified as murder after one of the victims died.
A man had called the boys to attack the trio after one of them hugged his girlfriend.
As a result of the attack, Andrew Lajun, 27, was seriously injured. He was wheeled into ICU before being transferred to a ward where he died at 4pm last Friday.
Sibu police chief ACP Shafie Ismail said: “We believe jealousy sparked the killing. Like the previous crime of passion, we have re-classified this mass attack as murder under Section 302 of the Penal Code.” Section 302 carries the mandatory death sentence on conviction of murder.
Shafie said investigation of the second crime of passion was being carried out under Section 34 of the same Code as an act of common intent.
The police chief said five teenagers, aged 15 to 19, had been arrested and remanded for investigation until Tuesday. Another suspect, a teenage boy, was still at large.
He said they had initially classified the mass attack as causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons under Section 326 of the Penal Code.
According to the facts of the case, a girl and two boys were chatting on the road when three men (Andrew was one of them) came up to them. One of the trio hugged the teenage girl, which made her boyfriend jealous. The boyfriend later brought in a group of teenage boys armed with parang, knife and other weapons to attack the trio.
Andrew was seriously injured while the other two men escaped with light injuries. The cut on Andrew’s jaw caused seven teeth to fall out. His death was believed due to a fatal blow on his head.
Police arrested five suspects on the second day of the incident.
They have yet to confirm whether Andrew was the one hugging the teenage girl but there was a claim that it could be another man in the group.
Another claim was that the three victims could have been drunk when one of them hugged the girl. The police have yet to confirm this too.