A 26-year-old Hong Kong man pleaded guilty to slapping and shaking his new-born daughter and threatening his mother-in-law with a knife at the High Court on Monday.
The abuse left the girl, who is now one-and-a-half years old, living in the hospital’s intensive care unit, blind and on life-support machines, the Headline Daily reported.
Chung Kei-yuen pleaded guilty to three counts of ill-treating his daughter and one count of criminal intimidation of his mother-in-law.
The court heard he had become annoyed by the baby’s crying, who was less than one month old at the time, and carried out the assaults in Yuen Long in the New Territories in December 2016.
On three occasions, he slapped the crying girl three or four times before holding her up and shaking her four or five times, Sing Pao reported. On the last occasion, he threatened his mother-in-law with a knife as she suggested the girl might have died when she was told the baby did not cry and her body had turned cold.
The court also heard that Chung spent four hours searching for terms on the internet such as “BB’s body turns cold,” “BB doesn’t open eyes,” “any problem with BB not crying” before sending the baby to hospital.
The girl suffered from an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in her brain as a result of the shaking and still cannot breathe on her own, the court heard.
The man’s lawyer said he now felt very remorseful and guilty. The judge adjourned sentencing.