[1][2] Tan's wife, 35-year-old Huang Mei Zhe, who came from China, was stabbed on her neck twice but survived with timely medical intervention.
The deceased victim's sister-in-law, 25-year-old Chinese national and Singapore permanent resident Wu Yun Yun (Tan Lead Shake's wife), escaped from the house despite the efforts of Tan's 63-year-old mother Ng Bee Hion (黄美香 Huáng Mĕixiāng) to stop her, and Wu had also injured Ng during the escape.
[12] Neighbours also told the media that they heard arguments coming from the victim's household, indicating that there was bad blood between Wu and her husband's family and it presumably led to the stabbing.
[13] The stabbing of Tan by Wu was listed as one of Singapore's most violent crimes committed by foreigners from China in recent years; one of these other cases was the Yishun triple murders, which involved a 42-year-old Chinese national named Wang Zhijian, a native of Tianjin who murdered his girlfriend and two other females inside their rented flat in Yishun in September 2008.
[17][18][19] Wu was also charged a week later with the attempted murder of Huang Mei Zhe and causing hurt to Ng Bee Hion.
[20][21] After Wu was charged, her father and other family members travelled from China to Singapore to provide moral support for her.
[30][31][32] 15 days later, on 18 November 2008, the prosecution decided to, in light of the psychiatric reports of Wu's case, reduce the original charge of murder to one of manslaughter.
[36] Wu's trial was set to take place tentatively in March 2009, and she also expressed her intention to plead guilty to both the lower charges.
Wu also found it difficult to adapt to the Singaporean way of life as she had no friends and she also cannot speak English and get accustomed to the local food, which were also among the contributory factors behind her depression, as cited by the psychiatric reports by Dr Fernandez.
Aside from her plea of guilt, a third preliminary charge of causing hurt to Tan's mother was consented by Wu to be taken into consideration during sentencing.
[42][43] The prosecution sought the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for the first charge of manslaughter, citing that despite her psychiatric condition, Wu was able to premeditate and plan ahead to commit the stabbing and even bought the fruit knife a few weeks ahead to facilitate her crime, and selected her date and timing of the crime on a Saturday to make sure her husband was there to care of their children.
On the other hand, the defense opposed the prosecution's submission for a life term, and they cited the mitigating factors like Wu's unhappy marriage and the mistreatment she and her children faced in the household, and they also stated that her psychiatric condition was still manageable with consistent treatment and there was a low likelihood for Wu to commit another offence after her release from prison, and hence she cannot be considered a menace to society and her case was unsuitable for the highest punishment of life in prison.
In his verdict, Justice Kan found that Wu did not deserve the maximum penalty of life imprisonment, because by reference of some precedent cases of mentally ill offenders like Aniza binte Essa (who served nine years in prison for abetting the manslaughter of her husband), the case of Wu Yun Yun was not one where it was appropriate to subject a mentally-ill offender to life in prison, since Wu's condition could still be addressed by treatment and she had shown some improvement despite the possibility of a relapse, and she also had a low propensity to re-offend, and therefore, Justice Kan agreed with the defence that Wu should be given a sentence lower than life for stabbing Tan to death and injuring Tan's wife.
Afterwards, on 13 September 2010, both Huang and Ng filed a motion to the High Court, seeking to obtain a declaration that the Attorney-General had acted illegally and/or irrationally and/or with procedural impropriety in failing and/or refusing to appeal against Wu's sentence.
[52][53][54] However, Justice Tan Lee Meng, who heard the motion, found that the motion itself was unsustainable and devoid of merit in nature given that the plaintiffs' arguments did not prove that the prosecution's decision to not appeal Wu's sentence was indicative of them having acted unconstitutionally or had been motivated by bad faith or extraneous circumstances, and there was no deprivation of the plaintiffs' right to equal protection under the law.
Anandan said that he did not accept the case because of Wu's poverty or nationality, but because she deserved the best defence in her trial and he felt for her family's desperation to aid her and her need for help.