SYDNEY (AP) — A judge sentenced a Sydney taekwondo instructor on Tuesday to life in prison without possibility of release for murdering a 7-year-old student and…
A judge sentenced a Sydney taekwondo instructor on Tuesday to life in prison without possibility of release for murdering a 7-year-old student and the boy’s parents.
Kwang Kyung Yoo, 51, sat with his head bowed as Justice Ian Harrison said he would never be eligible for parole.
Harrison said Yoo has been motivated by the jealousy he felt for the family’s financial success.
“I’m satisfied that the level of culpability in the commission of these offenses is so extreme that the community interest in retribution, punishment, community protection and deterrence can only be met through the imposition of a life sentence,” Harrison told the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Harrison said Yoo had no reason to murder the boy or his parents in February last year.
State law prevents child victims of crime from being identified, so the boy’s parents also can’t be named.
Yoo and his victims were all born in South Korea.
Yoo had pleaded guilty to the three murders at an earlier court appearance. He had no prior criminal record.
Yoo had strangled the boy and his 41-year-old mom in his Lion’s Taekwondo and Martial Arts Academy in western Sydney.
