A young man in China who teamed up with his friends to kill his mother in a fake road accident in a bid to gain her insurance has been sentenced to death.
The 23-year-old man, surnamed Lu, and his friend, identified as Yang, were both handed the death penalty over the intentional killing, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
Lu and His Friends Hatched the Plan After His Mother Received a Hefty Sum as Compensation Following a 2023 Road Accident
Another man, Cheng, was sentenced to seven years in jail for assisting in the crime. The verdict was handed down by Taizhou Intermediate People's Court in eastern Zhejiang province in April but was only made public recently.
Lu and his two friends were former classmates at a secondary school in Taizhou.
They came up with the fraudulent scheme after Lu's mother, surnamed Xu, was injured in a road accident in April 2023 and received 320,000 yuan (US$45,000) in compensation from an insurance policy. Lu and Yang withdrew the money from Xu's bank account before squandering it on luxury items.
The trio then initially planned to carry out another fraud by jabbing Xu in the eyes, hoping to get another insurance payout from her injuries. When that scheme failed, they jabbed Lu's father in the eyes with a bamboo stick, leading them to successfully get his insurance compensation of 1,300 yuan (US$180).
Trio Then Planned to Stage a Car Accident to Kill Xu to Get More Money from the Insurance Company
Emboldened, the trio embarked on a deadly fraud involving much more money. Yang suggested to Lu that they stage a car accident to kill his grandfather; the former said he had heard that road accident offenders whose victims were elderly would not be jailed. However, Lu did not agree because he was brought up by his grandfather.
They settled on targeting his mother with whom he had a bad relationship. "Yang told me that if we kill my mother and receive the insurance compensation, my family's life will be improved a lot. So I agreed to kill my mother," Lu told police.
They also searched online for information such as "the speed needed to kill someone with a car" and "the amount of insurance compensation that might be obtained," and they agreed on a division of the spoils and a plan to evade detection.
On September 30, 2023, Lu asked his mother to go out with him and left her waiting at the roadside. Yang then drove a car, with Cheng sitting alongside him, and smashed into the mother. Xu was pronounced dead in hospital. She was 44.
Police Became Suspicious After the Trio's Stories Did not Match
Lu aroused police suspicion when the stories he and his two friends told investigators did not match and were arrested in October 2023. The trio had even decided how they would split the insurance cash.The court ruled that the men should be severely punished because of their despicable intentions which posed a malicious impact on society.
