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Mingdong Chen pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree manslaughter. Louis Lanzano/AP/Press Association Images
New York
Man who slaughtered family with meat cleaver jailed for 125 years
Mingdong Chen, 27, killed a family of five in October 2013.
A CHINESE MAN was today sentenced to 125 years to life in a US prison for murdering a New York mother and her four children with a meat cleaver.
Mingdong Chen, 27, a cousin of the mother’s husband, had been staying with the family in their Brooklyn apartment in the weeks leading up to the vicious October 2013 attack.
Qiao Zhen Li, 37, was found dead with her daughters aged nine and seven, and sons aged five and one, in their home on 27 October 2013. They had suffered fatal stab wounds to the neck and head.
Li earlier telephoned her mother-in-law in China to tell her that Chen was threatening the family with a knife, investigators said.
The mother-in-law alerted relatives in Brooklyn who rushed to the apartment, where they found Chen covered in blood and forcibly restrained him until police arrived.
‘Sadistic attack’
Chen pleaded guilty earlier this month to three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree manslaughter, and was sentenced by a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge on Tuesday.
“This defendant’s vicious and sadistic attack makes him completely unfit to remain in society,” said Brooklyn district attorney Ken Thompson.
He will now spend the rest of his life behind bars.
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