A 36-year-old man who squandered his adoptive father’s inheritance of over $40,000 in just four months and accumulated about $30,000 in gambling debts attempted to kill his 77-year-old adoptive mother to inherit her property.
He was sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
The defendant, Yong Chun Hong, pleaded guilty on Wednesday (16 Apr 2025) at the State Courts to one charge of knowingly committing an act that endangered the life of another person.
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The judge condemned his actions as deserving no sympathy before delivering the sentence.
His adoptive mother attended the hearing with family members. Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom with tears in her eyes, she said she hopes her son will reform after his release and not repeat his mistakes.
Otherwise, she said they would be unable to live together, and she would have to leave him.
Case Details
Court documents showed that Yong worked part-time collecting donations for a charity organisation.
The 78-year-old victim, Huang Shunhua (name transliterated from Mandarin), is Yong’s adoptive mother who works as a freelance tailor and part-time cleaner.
The victim and her husband adopted Yong in 1991 when he was two years old. The couple had no other children.
At the time of the incident, Yong lived with the victim in an HDB flat at Block 412 Serangoon Central, registered under the victim’s name.
In August 2023, Yong’s adoptive father passed away, leaving him an inheritance of $45,000.
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From September that year, Yong frequently visited a nightclub called Club Axis with friends and quickly racked up $30,000 in debts.
The Murder Attempt
Unable to repay his debts, Yong used his adoptive mother’s personal information as collateral to borrow $4,500 from illegal moneylenders.
When the victim discovered this, she confronted Yong. He demanded she sell the flat to help him clear his debts, but she refused.
This led Yong to consider that if his adoptive mother died, he could become the sole heir to the flat and escape his debts.
He subsequently made multiple online searches, including “would overdosing on medication cause death?”, “CPF withdrawals”, and information about hanging oneself at home in Singapore.
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On the night of 16 January 2024, between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM, as the victim was lying down to sleep, Yong suddenly pressed a pillow over her face in an attempt to suffocate her.
The victim managed to push the pillow away and asked Yong if he was trying to kill her. Yong then apologised and cried.
The victim stayed awake all night, fearing another attack, while Yong sat by her bedside until dawn.
The next morning, the victim called her cousin’s daughter for help. Accompanied by her relative, she went to a neighbourhood clinic where, after learning of Yong’s actions, the doctor alerted the police.
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