By Clare Sibthorpe
For each Chinese New Year celebration, Liqun Pan’s family shares a meal under one roof.
But they can no longer celebrate, Pan’s emotional father has told a Sydney court, because his daughter is not there and never will be again.
Liqun Pan, 19, was stabbed to death by her boyfriend in the Wolli Creek apartment they shared.Credit: NSW Police
On June 28, 2020, the 19-year-old university student was found stabbed to death inside the Wolli Creek unit she shared with her boyfriend, Weijie He, whom she travelled to Australia with. The day before, He was found severely injured near their apartment block after falling or jumping four floors.
He, then 22, spent seven months in a coma before being charged with murder. He suffered a brain injury but was found fit to stand trial. He ultimately pleaded guilty to murder in late 2022.
During a Supreme Court sentence hearing on Tuesday, Pan’s grief-stricken father Zee Whu read out a victim impact statement.
He said Pan was the eldest of four children and grew up in a rural village in the coastal province of Guangdong in south-east China. She was well-behaved, kind, and took care of her younger siblings.
Coming from generations of farmers, Pan’s parents were supportive of their daughter’s wish to move to Australia to study at university.
“Our hope and happiness evaporated the moment her life was viciously taken away in 2020,” Pan’s dad wrote.
“The moment when the police officer described the extensive and horrific injuries that Liqun had sustained … I felt the blood drain from my heart.”
On Tuesday, He faced court wearing prison greens, sitting in a wheelchair and occasionally rocking back and forth.
His legal team has argued He was suffering a severe mental impairment at the time of the murder, in a bid to lessen his sentence.
The court heard evidence He was taking nitrous oxide – sometimes inhaled recreationally to induce euphoria, relaxation and a hallucinogenic state – in the months and potentially years before the murder, and empty “boxes” of the drug were found in the apartment following Pan’s murder.
At the crux of the sentence hearing is whether He was experiencing a psychotic episode related to drug-induced psychosis at the time of Pan’s death or was solely impacted by recent nitrous oxide use.
One of four doctors who gave evidence, Dr Adam Martin, said it was impossible to be certain whether He was acutely affected by nitrous oxide on the day of the murder.
“We don’t know what he was taking in those hours or even minutes before the offending,” Martin told the court.
Crown prosecutor Rossi Kotsis asked Martin, who examined He after his coma, about notes in his report that He had acted strangely at a dinner with friends the night before he fell from the apartment.
Kotsis asked Martin: “You conclude [in your report] the bizarre behaviour in the presence of [friends] combined with the evidence of the empty nitrous oxide containers [in the apartment] and the extreme violence and probable suicide [attempt] all point to a transient but highly disturbed mental state, directly associated with substance use?”
Martin agreed.
“And you then conclude … it is likely that he was heavily intoxicated and experiencing a transient delirium, manifesting with psychotic phenomena, in the time leading up to the offending and directly related to the offence?”
“Yes,” Martin said, agreeing his opinion aligned with another doctor’s. All doctors examined on Tuesday told the court it was unclear how much nitrous oxide He took immediately before the murder.
Kotsis said the facts stated He told a friend he had invited Pan with him to Australia but now “couldn’t get rid of her”. The facts state he told his mother Pan was “obedient”, that she “dared not oppose” him and if Pan didn’t do enough chores he would “beat her up”.
Further coercive and controlling behaviours Kotsis outlined in the facts included a “contract” signed by both He and Pan, in which she was on a holiday and ordered not to drink, go to bars, see people of the opposite sex or have her phone on silent.
“Any violation of those rules would be regarded as crossing the line and indicate the disappearance of love and the fact he no longer matters,” Kotsis recounted to psychiatrist, Dr Richard Furst, who was called by the defence.
Furst believed He had a drug-induced psychosis caused by ongoing use of nitrous oxide, but conceded “there is a possibility” when asked by Kotsis: “What I’m suggesting to you is there is a non-psychotic possibility here that this was just straight-up domestic violence.”
But He’s defence barrister Geoff Harrison asked Furst and Martin if it was possible the psychosis was “brought on from long-term drug use with long-term use of nitrous oxide, but [with He] not being intoxicated by nitrous oxide at the time,” to which they both agreed.
Harrison pointed to psychological evidence there were little non-psychotic motivations for stabbing Pan and said there was no evidence Pan was fearful of He.
The court heard He initially told psychologists he believed a third party threw him off the balcony and that texts on his phone would reveal “evidence of bad doing” by others to his late girlfriend – but there was no evidence of this.
The hearing before Justice Julia Lonergan continues on Wednesday.