Police seek warrant on charges of matricide
Seoul's Gangseo Police Station said Friday it had applied for an arrest warrant against a woman in her 40s suspected of killing her mother at their home in Gangseo-gu. The station said it filed the warrant application Thursday night, citing charges of matricide.
The suspect, identified only as A, is accused of stabbing her mother to death inside their home in Ujangsan-dong, Gangseo-gu on Thursday morning. Police believe the attack took place between 7 a.m. and 8:15 a.m. A called police herself, saying she had "done something bad to her stepmother," and was arrested on the scene by responding officers. She was initially booked on murder charges, but the charge was later upgraded to matricide after investigators confirmed the victim was her biological mother.
The first round of police questioning stretched late into Thursday night. Despite having turned herself in, A reportedly denied involvement in the killing during the interrogation.
Police said they found no evidence of financial disputes or personal grudges between the two women. However, they obtained statements from other family members indicating that A had at times directed hostility toward her mother — shouting at her to leave and using abusive language.
A's daughter, the victim's granddaughter, also called 112, the emergency number, after a phone conversation with A in which A said she had "scolded her grandmother for trying to feed her poisoned food." Police searched the home but found no poison.
Police obtained statements from family members indicating that A had been receiving long-term psychiatric treatment. Investigators plan to conduct a second round of questioning to determine the exact motive and circumstances of the killing.
newday@heraldcorp.com
