Liqun Pan was stabbed to death in a Wolli Creek apartment. Photo / NSW Police Force
Liqun Pan was stabbed to death in a Wolli Creek apartment. Photo / NSW Police Force
Warning: Article discusses domestic abuse
A Chinese man’s brutal killing of his girlfriend before he fell from a Sydney unit block left the woman’s devastated family in immeasurable grief and pain, a court has heard.
Weijie He stabbed 19-year-old student Liqun Pan in the southern Sydney suburb of WolliCreek on June 27, 2020, before he fell from the fourth floor of the apartment building.
An emotional statement from Pan’s father was read out in the NSW Supreme Court, as her 24-year-old killer listened on wearing prison greens and seated in a wheelchair.
”Our hope and happiness evaporated the moment her life was viciously taken away,” Zewu Pan said in the statement, which was written in Mandarin but read to the court in English.
The court heard He was a regular user of nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, consuming five boxes two days before the murder.
Defence barrister Geoff Harrison argued his client had experienced drug-induced psychosis at the time of the killing.
But forensic psychiatrist Adam Martin told the court the Chinese national had shown “a degree of control and coercive behaviour” towards Pan before the murder.
Liqun Pan moved to Australia to study English. (NSW Police Force)
He argued with his girlfriend, believing she had a 50-year-old “sugar daddy” five years earlier, and threatened to beat her up if she did not complete her chores, according to agreed facts filed with the court.
Flying back to China in March 2019, Pan signed a contract that she would not go to bars, drink alcohol, do anything with people of the opposite sex or put her phone on silent.
The contract claimed that violating its rules showed the “disappearance of love” and that He did not matter to Pan.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Richard First said drug-induced psychosis was the “most likely” motive for the murder.
However, he accepted there were other alternatives.
”There is a non-psychotic possibility here - that this was just a straight-out domestic violence murder?” asked Crown prosecutor Rossi Kotsis.
”There is that possibility,” First said.
Justice Julia Lonergan will have to consider whether He’s moral culpability was reduced because of the claimed psychotic episode or if he was intoxicated by the laughing gas.
While He pleaded guilty to murder, the killer had also been coached by his family to make denials and claim he had amnesia.
In December 2021, He told Martin the couple had been harmed by “bad people”, who killed his girlfriend and threw him off the building.
