Boy convicted of Cambodia stabbing not attacker, says victim

Jane Nye

New Zealand journalist Jane Nye is not sure the right man was convicted of stabbing her boyfriend to death in Cambodia this year.

Ms Nye, 29, survived stab wounds to her face, neck and arms, but her boyfriend, 37-year-old Briton David Mitchell, was killed in the frenzied attack in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. He died from five stab wounds to his chest.

Lao Chamrong, 15, was yesterday convicted of Mr Mitchell's murder. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison when he appeared in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

He was also convicted of wounding Ms Nye, who was flown to Bangkok Hospital for surgery.

Chamrong entered Mr Mitchell's apartment through an unlocked back door intending to commit robbery, police said.

The apartment was tucked up behind the Ginger Monkey bar Mr Mitchell owned, a popular drinking hole for the expatriate community in Phnom Penh.

Ms Nye, the editor of the English-language Cambodian Scene magazine, was also in the house at the time.

Police said she encountered Chamrong as she emerged from the bathroom and screamed for help.

The attacker, wielding a sharp knife, stabbed her and then stabbed Mr Mitchell, who had rushed out of the bedroom when he heard her cry.

Police arrested the attacker about half an hour after the incident at a nearby park, where they said he was trying to clean blood from his clothes.

Prosecutor Nget Sarath said Chamrong gave the same accounts of the incident during the trial and confessed to the killing.

Chamrong told the court he sneaked into Mr Mitchell's house looking for food and anything valuable to steal, but was interrupted.

Ms Nye, who was supported in court by her step-father, two friends and a translator, said she didn't believe the "frightened" young man with a shaven head and dressed in pyjama-type prison uniform and jandals was the killer of her boyfriend.

"Regardless of Lao Chamrong's confession, and what I believe to be a coerced confession at that, I cannot say for certain that he is the perpetrator," Ms Nye told NZPA from Phnom Penh.

She had not expected to testify, and she told the court she didn't see what her attacker looked like.

"He was smaller than the person I struggled with, slighter. And his statement given in court was, in many aspects, different to what occurred."

She said the sentence Judge Ke Sakhan handed down was "very lengthy for a minor".

When asked whether she felt justice had been served for the loss of her boyfriend and the scars she will wear as a reminder for the rest of her life, she said: "Somebody has paid for David's murder ... I just hope the judge made the right verdict."

- NZPA