Teen acquitted of schoolgirl’s murder had schizophrenia from age nine – judge

SHAH ALAM – The teenage boy acquitted of murdering a female student at a secondary school in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, had been suffering from very early-onset schizophrenia since he was nine, with the illness progressing over five years, the High Court heard.

In his grounds of judgment released today, following the teenager’s acquittal on Sept 14, High Court Judge Adlin Abdul Majid said the untreated persistence of the illness over the five years was central to the teenager’s condition at the time of the incident.

The judge noted that the teenager, who was 14 years and two months old when the incident occurred on Oct 14, 2025, had gone five years without a psychiatric assessment, despite periods of counselling and concerns raised by his school.

“It is important to remember that the illness was occurring within a mind that was still undergoing the neurodevelopmental process that forms the ordinary capacities for reality-testing,” he said.

Judge Adlin said the teenager’s prolonged exposure to violent media should not be viewed as a mature, independent choice, but as a symptom and channel of a dysfunctional mind already affected by illness, a view supported by unrebutted psychiatric evidence.

He said the prosecution’s evidence was insufficient to rebut the finding that the teenager’s delusions had deprived him of the ability to know that his act was wrong or contrary to law.

The judge added that he was satisfied that between 9.20am and 9.35am on Oct 14, 2025, the teenager, due to an unsound mind caused by schizophrenia, was incapable of knowing the nature of his act and that it was wrong or contrary to law.

“Accordingly, the child has discharged the burden placed upon him by section 105 of the Evidence Act of proving, on a balance of probabilities, that on 14 Oct 2025, at the time of causing the death of a female student, he was incapable of knowing the nature of his act.

“He was also incapable of knowing that his act was wrong or contrary to law, by reason of unsoundness of mind, within the meaning of section 84 of the Penal Code,” he said.

The judge also noted that symptoms of the teenager’s very early-onset and ultimately severe psychotic illness had been present since he was nine and documented over five years through family accounts, school records and teachers’ observations.

Among the signs were withdrawal, delusional thinking, refusal to remove his mask, and chronic lateness caused by fear and hallucinated voices, he said.

However, Judge Adlin said the symptoms had been interpreted as behavioural or disciplinary problems rather than signs of a mental illness requiring psychiatric treatment.

He said the case had laid bare how serious mental illness could progress in a child while remaining invisible to those around him, and the grave consequences that could result from that invisibility.

The judge expressed hope that the case would lead parents, the school system, courts and the wider public to better understand the signs and consequences of untreated mental illness in children, so that symptoms could be recognised and treated earlier.

He said it was in this spirit that the decision was made, so that other families could be spared what both families had suffered.

The court also found, based on the evidence, that during the incident the teenager perceived the deceased not as a person but as a “non-player character” (NPC), believed he was in a fictional parallel world, and saw killing her as a move in a game that would transfer her attributes to him.

The teenager did not believe that killing her would end her life. He was in a dissociated state in which, according to the court’s findings, his actions were no longer controlled by his mind.

“From this evidence, I am satisfied that the psychotic illness had, at the material time, deprived him of the capacity to comprehend that he was taking the life of a living person, as opposed to enacting a fantasy upon an object of his own delusional construction,” he said.

The judge said the psychiatric report showed that, by the time of the incident, the teenager believed he had become a god-like figure who was entitled and required to administer justice in the anime movie.

The report also observed that the teenager was acting under the direction of a commanding auditory hallucination, which he experienced as controlling him.

On Sept 14, the High Court acquitted and discharged the teenager of the murder charge and ordered that he be placed at Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta for a period subject to the approval of the Sultan of Selangor.

He was charged with murdering his schoolmate in a female toilet at a national secondary school in Bandar Utama between 9.20am and 9.35am on Oct 14, 2025.

The charge was brought under Section 302 of the Penal Code, which provides for the death penalty or imprisonment of between 30 and 40 years, with not more than 12 strokes of the cane if the offender is not sentenced to death.

However, under Section 97(1) of the Child Act 2001, the death penalty cannot be imposed on a person under the age of 18. –BERNAMA