A Vietnam court has sentenced a 30-year-old man to death for brutally killing his unofficial wife’s three-year-old daughter by hammering ten nails into her skull in a public striking case that first happened last year.

Nguyen Trung Huyen, a man from Hanoi’s Thach That District, received the death penalty for the charge of murder at his trial conducted by the Hanoi People’s Court on Thursday. 

He was also sentenced to four years in prison for intentionally causing injury, so his combined sentence is death.

According to the indictment, Nguyen Thi Luyen, 27, the mother of the toddler, D.N.A., divorced her husband in June 2021 after nine years of marriage and having three daughters.

Luyen later lived with Huyen as husband and wife, without registering their marriage, at a rented house in the district.

Three months later, L. took A., the youngest of her daughters, to live with her and Huyen, who had since exacted his frequent brutalization on the little girl, with an aim to kill her so that he and L. would not have to raise her anymore.

Huyen had beaten A., forced her to drink pesticide and swallow screws, poured wood glue into her nose, and broken her arms since September 2021 before the deadly torture happened to the ill-fated girl on January 17 this year.

At 8:00 am that day, when L. went to work, Huyen slapped A. many times after he called her but the girl did not answer.

The man grew angry and then hammered ten nails, over 2cm long each, in the child’s head.

After the crime, Huyen left A. in the care of a neighboring woman and then returned home for sleeping.

On the afternoon of the same day, L. took A. to Thach That District General Hospital as she vomited and was in serious health conditions.

The girl was hospitalized in a coma and convulsions, with her right arm already in a plaster cast, doctors said.

An X-ray scan of her head later showed ten objects that looked like nails in her skull.

Due to her conditions getting worse, A. was transferred to Hanoi-based Saint Paul General Hospital for continued treatment but she succumbed to her severe injuries on March 12.

Considering Huyen’s acts as extremely brutal, the trial panel decided to give him the capital punishment.

Regarding civil liability, the court ordered the defendant to pay nearly VND470 million (US$19,300) as compensation to the little girl’s family.

The court also announced that there were not enough grounds to determine that Luyen had committed the offense of concealing a crime or not reporting it as alleged by the victim’s family and their lawyer.

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