Samantha Jones killed John William Jones in 2018 in their home
Alor Setar:
A British woman was jailed for three and a half years on Monday after she tearfully admitted that she stabbed her husband to death during a fight on the Malaysian holiday island of Langkawi.
Samantha Jones killed John William Jones in 2018 at their home on the island during an argument in the wee hours of the morning, which her lawyer says came after years of domestic violence.
The 52-year-old admitted “culpable homicide”, which roughly equates to manslaughter, and was sentenced to jail and fined 10,000 ringgits ($ 2,300).
She was originally charged with murder, which carries a mandatory death penalty in Malaysia, but prosecutors accepted the lower charge.
At a hearing in the northern town of Alor Setar, Jones pleaded guilty and then cried as a prosecutor showed the High Court the murder weapon and photos of the crime scene.
In mitigation, her lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo said Jones had long suffered physical and emotional abuse from her husband, who was an alcoholic and had a fierce temper.
The brawl began on October 18, 2018, after Jones’ husband kicked her while she was lying in bed in the wee hours of the morning, the lawyer said.
Jones fled into the kitchen but followed and a fight began, in which she stabbed the victim with a knife.
She inflicted a 15-centimeter (six-inch) injury to the liver of the 63-year-old victim, who was under the influence of alcohol at the time, prosecutors said.
An ambulance arrived after 45 minutes but it was too late.
“I was scared and he was so angry,” Jones, who wore a mask, said in tears in court.
“I miss him terribly. What I did that night was unintentional.
“I tried to stop him, I didn’t know it would turn out like this.”
Jones, who could have faced a maximum jail term of 10 years, looked calm when the sentence was handed down.
The British couple had been married since 2001 and had no children.
They had lived since 2005 on the seaside island in northwestern Malaysia, which annually attracts millions of tourists to its beaches.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
