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On 14 October, 2025, Yap Shing Xuen, 16, was stabbed to death in a girls’ toilet at SMK Bandar Utama Damansara (4) during school hours.

Her attacker was 14 at the time.

Nearly 500 mourners attended her funeral.

The case gripped the nation — prompting Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to address it publicly, raising concerns over youth mental health and behaviour in schools.

Today, the boy who killed her walked free from a murder charge.

Shah Alam High Court Judge Justice Adlin Abdul Majid acquitted the now-15-year-old on Monday, accepting a defence under Section 84 of the Penal Code — unsound mind.

Free From Charges, Not From Custody

Psychiatric expert Dr. Ian Lloyd Anthony, from Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta, testified that the teenager suffered from schizophrenia and was of unsound mind at the time of the stabbing.

The three deputy public prosecutors assigned to the case — Raja Zaizul Faridah Raja Zaharudin, Aqharie Durranie Aziz, and Ahmad Iqbal Azman — failed to rebut the evidence.

He was not sent home.

The court ordered the teenager detained at Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta in Perak for psychiatric treatment — at the pleasure of the Sultan of Selangor.

No release date exist, no sentence was handed down.

The proceedings were held behind closed doors, as required for cases involving minors.

Defence counsel Kitson Foong confirmed the acquittal and said the defence had been successfully proven.

@bbcnews The case has shocked Malaysia and sparked debate about the effect of social media on children. #Malaysia #Adolescence #SocialMedia #BBCNews ♬ original sound – BBC News

“She Had Only Just Begun Her Life”

Yap’s mother, Wong Lee Ping, broke her silence — hours after the court acquitted the boy.

She described her daughter as disciplined, considerate, and hardworking. A girl who saved her pocket money and CNY red packets to secretly buy birthday gifts and bake cakes for her mother.

Wong said those quiet, ordinary moments are now the ones she misses most.

What a mother finds hardest to let go of is not the expensive gifts. It is those ordinary moments we once took for granted, but which will never happen again.

She said the past year had felt like living with a permanent part of herself missing — that some pain does not disappear with time, only becomes something you carry.

Despite today’s verdict, Wong vowed she would not stop seeking justice for her daughter.

READ MORE: A Wake-Up Call for All Parents: Stab Victim’s Mother Speaks Out One Month After Her Daughter’s Tragic Death

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