Woman cuts friend's belly

Leung Sin-ting, 27, befriended a pregnant woman identified as 'Ms Lee' through an online childcare forum, and invited her home to pick up a baby bed and feeding bottles. -- PHOTO: APPLE DAILY

HONG KONG - A HONG Kong woman who faked her own pregnancy has pleaded guilty to cutting open the belly of a pregnant woman and trying to remove her baby. The infant later died.

Leung Sin-ting, 27, pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of manslaughter and inflicting grievous bodily harm on the expectant mother, court spokesman Brenda Yu said on Friday.

Prosecutors said Leung invited the woman, who was eight months pregnant, to her apartment last September after the two met on a childcare website, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

It was there that Leung strangled the woman with a cord until she passed out and then slashed a 4-inch (10-centimeter) wound in her abdomen, it said.

The woman survived the attack but the infant died six months later after suffering wounds that caused brain damage and impaired bodily function, the newspaper reported.

Leung said she was jealous of the pregnant woman's happiness and wanted the child for herself, it said. Details of the case were not released at the time of the crime and were only made public this week. A message left with prosecutors was not immediately returned.

According to the news report, the prosecution said Leung, who claimed to have suffered miscarriages in 2003 and 2008, pretended to be pregnant by wearing towels tied under her clothes, according to the newspaper report.

She managed to persuade her husband of four years that she was carrying a baby and obtain a doctor's certificate to claim maternity leave, the newspaper said.

Sentencing was set for Oct 27 to give prosecutors time to determine whether Leung should be committed to a mental hospital and whether she posed a long-term risk to the community.

A similar case was reported in June in the United States, where an Oregon woman was accused of cutting a foetus out of another expectant mother after they met during a search for baby clothes on the Internet. The woman was found dead in her apartment, and the accused was charged with kidnapping the infant girl. -- AP