On 11 January 2022, 30-year-old Isabel Elizabeth Francis, who was 15 weeks pregnant with a daughter, was stabbed to death by her 33-year-old husband, David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun (Chinese: 周国坤; pinyin: Zhōu Guókūn), inside their Ang Mo Kio flat.
Francis studied at CHIJ Toa Payoh before she enrolled in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where she pursued a diploma in mass communications.
As of 2022 when she was murdered, Francis worked as an assistant manager at Deliveroo, and she enrolled as a part-time student at the law school of Singapore University of Social Sciences.
[4][5][3] In December 2021, Chow received the training company's half-year financial report from an accounting staff member and found the numbers to be unusually poor.
[4][6] On the early morning of 11 January 2022, at about 1 AM, Chow was unable to sleep and he paced up and down the corridor of his flat, his mind still full of his business concerns.
At about 5 AM, Chow grabbed the sharpest knife from the kitchen, and returned to the master bedroom, where 30-year-old Isabel Elizabeth Francis was sleeping.
At one point during the stabbing, Francis managed to get out of the bedroom and crawled to the front door, but Chow caught up with her and plunged the knife into her head until she no longer moved.
[27] On 26 October 2023, 35-year-old David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun was brought to trial at the High Court for killing his pregnant wife.
Chow had been assessed and found to be suffering from diminished responsibility induced by an adjustment disorder, which caused him to have "catastrophic thinking that he would be bankrupt with no way out and had suicidal thoughts but felt that his death would bring shame to his wife", and it constituted an abnormality of the mind.
Chow, represented by veteran lawyer Shashi Nathan, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge before Justice Pang Khang Chau of the High Court.
[9] During the sentencing trial, the defence referred to the case of Xavier Yap Jung Houn, who was jailed 14 years for killing his two autistic sons, to support their submissions.
Justice Pang found that Chow's killing of Francis was not due to animosity, jealousy or any kind of malice towards his wife.
He accepted that Chow had done the act out of a desire to spare his wife and daughter from suffering the pain and shame of losing a husband and father, and he also planned to commit suicide.
Legal experts analyzed that the possibility for an individual to commit murder could be originated from several compounding factors, including mental conditions, stress and personal circumstances, and there was a greater tendency for a murder to happen within the family as there were higher probabilities to kill, in view of close familial ties and shared living arrangements, not discounting any other relevant compounding factors.
[33] A month after the sentencing of David Brian Chow, Francis's brother Emanuel agreed to be interviewed by the national newspaper The Straits Times to speak about his sister's case.
Emanuel described his brother-in-law as a "very kind and caring person" who treated his own mother and niece well, and gave the same treatment to everyone else, so he was shocked over the fact that Chow killed his sister.
Emanuel also gave his sister's unborn daughter the name Leah, the same name which Francis chose for her child upon her birth, which was estimated to happen on 25 June of the same year the murder occurred.
Emanuel stated that throughout the ordeal, his mother did not want to follow the media reports of her daughter's case, and he felt it was for the best since “ignorance is bliss”.
Dr Steve Lee, an associate consultant at the department of mood and anxiety at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), explained that adjustment disorder is a psychological condition that occurs when an individual has difficulty coping with stressors or major life changes, which include divorce, financial difficulties, interpersonal conflicts and physical health problems, and this could cause changes in a patient's emotion and behaviour, and in turn the person's daily functioning.
Dr Lee explained that with reference to the case of David Brian Chow, it was rare for a person with adjustment disorder to commit murder or resort to violent behaviours, given that most people with the disorder would not turn aggressive and often faced internal distress; the common symptoms were sadness, inability to concentrate and tendency to worry excessively.
Dr Lee's analysis of Chow's case was agreed upon by Dr Lim Boon Leng, a psychiatrist at Gleneagles Hospital, who stated it was rare and unusual for someone with the disorder to go to such extremes, but the disorder could be unpredictable, as some mentally ill people could also adopt nihilistic perspectives like extreme pessimism or have impaired rationality.
[34] Dr Brian Yeo, a consultant psychiatrist at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, stated that unlike depression, adjustment disorder is a short-term psychiatric condition that could disappear within six months after the stressor ceased, and it was "milder, short-lived and linked to stress", and Dr Lee added that this disorder could be addressed with appropriate treatment.
Another psychiatrist, Dr Geraldine Tan, stated that there was a need to help patients with such disorders to change their thinking process, citing her past case of a National Serviceman who had suicidal tendencies but recovered after his exemption from service and redirecting his focus on future plans like beginning his university studies.