SINGAPORE: When Huang Baoying was growing up, her older brother helped look after her, their parents recalled.
Huang Bocan would tutor his younger sister at night and help her with her studies, their mother said.
To his parents, he was a responsible son whom they trusted to help care for Baoying while they worked long hours.
Years later, he would be sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering her.
“We never imagined that things could become so serious,” their father said after Bocan, 34, was sentenced on Thursday (Nov 5).
Speaking to reporters in Mandarin outside the High Court, his mother said that besides helping Baoying with tuition and her studies, Bocan also did well in school himself.
“We felt like Bocan was relatively mature and grown-up, and since we were working, (we) let Bocan look after his sister,” she said.
The couple, who said they are factory workers, did not want to give their names.
She recalled how Bocan, still a young boy, would accompany their nanny to bring his baby sister home, helping care for her when she was not even a year old.
“Actually, he was very kind-hearted,” she said, recalling how he would do volunteer work, including overseas such as in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he helped to build toilets.
“Why did this happen?”
Bocan, who joined his girlfriend Chee Mei Wan, 47, and another man in starving his then 19-year-old sister and chaining her to a toilet, was first charged in 2021 with common intention of committing murder by causing bodily injury.
The 34-year-old Singaporean was convicted on Thursday of committing murder by causing his younger sister’s death.
The prolonged abuse resulted in the death of Baoying, who had lost 43 per cent of her body weight by the time she died from excessive blunt force trauma and severe malnourishment on May 5, 2021.
His co-accused are Lim Peng Tiong, 67 and Chee. Chee was the “coach” of a company that marketed and sold Herbalife products, where Bocan, Lim and Baoying were members and “trainee coaches”.
Lim was sentenced to 14 years and 11 months’ jail in May, while Chee’s case is pending before the courts.
One of Bocan’s lawyers, Mr Nathan Shashidran, told the court on Thursday that Bocan’s father had contacted him almost every day, and that Baoying’s death had “broken up the family in many ways”.
Bocan’s parents, who were seated in the front row of the public gallery throughout the almost three-hour hearing, asked through their lawyers to speak to their son after he was sentenced.
They walked over to their son, who was separated by a glass barrier, and spoke to him for close to 10 minutes.
As they parted, Bocan’s mother appeared visibly distressed. His father remained composed, pausing before he left to thank the defence lawyers, bowing to Mr Nathan.
Asked what Bocan told them, his mother said: “He didn’t say much. He told us to take care of ourselves since we are both older already.”
In turn, his father told Bocan he hopes that while his son is in jail, he will try his best to do good deeds and help people.