Taekwondo instructor in Australia accused of killing his student, 7, and the child's parents
A taekwondo instructor in Australia allegedly killed his 7-year-old student and the boy's parents before taking himself to a hospital with stab and slash wounds.
A taekwondo instructor in Australia is accused of killing his 7-year-old student and the boy's parents before arriving at a hospital with stab and slash wounds on his body, according to police.
Kwang Kyung Yoo, owner of the Lion's Taekwondo and Martial Arts Academy, will be charged with three counts of murder, Homicide Detective Superintendent Daniel Doherty said.
The killings were discovered after Yoo, who is known to his students as Master Lion, admitted himself to a hospital in Sydney Monday night for "stab wounds or slash wounds" to his chest, stomach and arms, Doherty said. Yoo claimed to police he had been attacked in a supermarket parking lot.
Police say Yoo killed his young student and the boy's 41-year-old mother Min Cho, 41, at his academy following a class on Monday before driving to their home and killing the boy's father and Cho's husband, 39-year-old Steven Cho.
Police did not officially release the victims’ names, but the boy's parents were identified in media reports.
The bodies were discovered by police on Tuesday and Yoo was arrested at the hospital.
A possible motive has yet to be disclosed by police. Yoo and the three victims were all born in South Korea and the boy was a regular taekwondo student.
"We're still establishing what other connections or ... what other relationships may have been or may not have been," Doherty said.
Police sources cited in media reports said the mother and son were strangled while the father was stabbed to death. The cause of Yoo's injuries has yet to be determined.
"It's not only tragic in the circumstances, but the consequences were cataclysmic. We've just lost three people from one family who've had their lives taken away," Doherty said.
Yoo drove the woman's BMW sedan from the academy to the family's home to kill the man before using it to drive himself to the hospital, according to reports.
Doherty said the instructor underwent surgery for his wounds and understood that he was under arrest.
"There [were] no warnings, from what we have gathered so far," Doherty said. "It was out of the blue. It wasn't something that was forewarned or planned."
The maximum penalty for someone convicted of murder in New South Wales state is life imprisonment, with a standard non-parole period of 20 years for the murder of an adult and 25 years for the murder of a child.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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