(Yonhap) — A local court on Monday sentenced a teacher to life in prison for murdering a 7-year-old student at their school in Daejeon in February.
The Daejeon District Court handed down the sentence to Myeong Jae-wan, 48, after convicting her of stabbing the girl, Kim Ha-neul, to death.
“Murder is a crime that takes away the life of a human being, and an unprecedented case occurred where an elementary school teacher brutally murdered a victim aged only seven at the school where she worked,” the bench said.
“She committed a cruel case of a child not being protected at school, where she should have been safest, even though as an elementary school teacher she was in a position to protect the victim.”
Myeong is accused of luring Ha-neul to a classroom in the afternoon of Feb. 5, when the girl was leaving an afterschool care program, by offering her a book and then stabbing her there with a weapon she had prepared in advance.
Myeong was also charged with kicking and damaging a school computer and assaulting another teacher who had asked to leave work together, several days before the murder.
Prosecutors earlier described the case as an “abnormal motive crime” in which the suspect sought to resolve her anger over family troubles and maladjustment at work by brutally murdering a target weaker than herself.
The prosecution had sought the death penalty for Myeong
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