12.06.07
Sleepwalking Slasher Cleared of Attempted Murder
For as long as I remember, I would always lock the bedroom door before I went to sleep. This may have a lot to do with the psychological scarring my pop inflicted upon me when I was five after he took me to see the Charles Bronson movie 10 to Midnight. The movie was about a serial killer who liked to strip naked and then brutally murder young women, by the way.
These days, when my folks stay over, my mom always chides me for keeping up this little habit of mine. She thinks I’m paranoid and immature. For a while, I thought she may have a point.
And then I came across this little story:
In Hong Kong, a woman who repeatedly stabbed and strangled a friend while sleepwalking was released from prison last Thursday after being cleared of attempted murder.
Thirty-year-old Zheng Wei-dong was found not guilty of trying to kill her friend after a jury decided she had been in a state of “insane automatism” when she attacked her friend. Psychiatrists testified Zheng had fallen asleep and acted out a violent dream when she wandered into the room of her friend last December and attacked her, saying: “I am the devil and I am killing you.”
After repeatedly stabbing her friend’s neck, almost severing the jugular vein, Zheng then tried to smother her with a pillow. Zheng’s lawyer brilliantly argued that his client posed very little threat to society.
If only Zheng’s friend had just LOCKED THE GODDAMN DOOR!