A female prisoner from the mainland who was sentenced to 24 years in the local jail for aggravated homicide and possession of a prohibited weapon in Macau in January 2020 committed suicide in the early hours of yesterday, the Correctional Services Bureau (DSC) announced in a statement.
The statement identified her as a 35-year-old surnamed Liao.
The city’s only prison is located in Coloane.
At around 3:40 a.m. yesterday, the statement said, prison guards patrolling found the woman had hung herself with a towel in the toilet of the jail cell. The guards immediately took the woman down and were still able to detect her weak heartbeat, and she was still breathing, the statement said.
Doctors at the prison carried out emergency treatment on the woman, who was meanwhile rushed to the public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre on the peninsula where she was pronounced dead at 4:49 a.m. after emergency treatment to save her life had failed, the statement said.
The statement said that “everything was normal” when prison guards patrolled the area at 3:26 a.m.
The case has been transferred to the Judiciary Police (PJ) for further investigation.
The statement said that the female inmate had self-harmed and attempted to kill herself on several occasions in 2020, because of which psychiatrists arranged by the prison had been treating her, and social workers had been providing her with counselling and other possible assistance. The prison had also arranged for guards to patrol past her cell more often, the statement said.
The Correctional Services Bureau deeply regrets the case and has contacted the woman’s family members providing them with the necessary assistance and support, the statement said.
A PJ statement yesterday said that no suicide note was found at the scene.
According to previous news reports about the aggravated homicide case which occurred in January 2020, Liao killed her ex-boyfriend’s wife and injured his mother and son in a knife attack in a flat in a housing estate in Areia Preta.
After the attack, police officers rushed to the scene and arrested Liao. Under questioning after her arrest, Liao told the police that she suspected her ex-lover of having tried to harm and poison her.
Details about the aggravated homicide case can be checked at: https://www.macaupostdaily.com/article7487.html.
