Vietnamese Australian jailed 25 years for girlfriend’s murder

By Quy Nguyen August 21, 2018 | 04:09 am PT

Australian police in Melbourne, Australia, as seen in a file photo by Reuters.

Vietnamese Australian Tang Thien Phuc will spend 25 years in jail without parole for killing his partner last September.

An Australian court found Phuc, 50, guilty of beating his 44-year-old partner Huynh Thi Hoa to death for nagging him about his drug addiction, Australia’s 9News reported Monday.

High on methamphetamine, Phuc used a metal vacuum cleaner pole to strike Hoa in the head until she died, and later repeatedly stabbed her in the head with a samurai sword, the court heard.

After the murder, he stole her bank card but unsuccessfully tried to withdraw money from her bank account. He hid in a garden for 13 days before being captured on September 20 last year.

The judge described the crime as “savage and vicious,” 9News reported.

Phuc moved to Australia when he was 15 years old. He lived with Hoa, a divorced mother of two young children, in a house in Melbourne.