SHAH ALAM, Sept 23 — The boy acquitted of murdering a girl at a secondary school in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, was found to have developed schizophrenia at age nine, showed the grounds of judgment released today.
Following the boy’s acquittal on September 14, High Court judge Adlin Abdul Majid said his illness was left untreated for five years and was central to his condition at the time of the attack.
The judge noted that the teenager, who was 14 years old when the incident occurred on October 14, 2025, had gone five years without psychiatric assessment, despite periods of counselling and concerns raised by his school.
“It is important to remember that the illness was occurring within a mind that was still undergoing the neurodevelopmental process that forms the ordinary capacities for reality testing,” he said.
Adlin said the teenager’s prolonged exposure to violent media should be seen not as a mature, independent choice, but as a symptom and a channel of a dysfunctional mind already affected by illness, a view backed by unrebutted psychiatric evidence.
He said the prosecution’s evidence was insufficient to rebut the finding that the teenager’s delusions had deprived him of the ability to know that his act was wrong or against the law.
The judge added that evidence showed that the teenager, due to unsound mind caused by schizophrenia, was incapable of knowing the nature of his act and that it was wrong or against the law.
“Accordingly, the child has discharged the burden placed upon him by Section 105 of the Evidence Act of proving, on a balance of probabilities, that on October 14, 2025, at the time of causing the death of a schoolgirl, he was incapable of knowing the nature of his act.
“He was also incapable of knowing that his act was wrong or contrary to law, by reason of unsoundness of mind, within the meaning of Section 84 of the Penal Code," he said.
The judge also noted that symptoms of the teenager’s very early-onset and ultimately severe psychotic illness had been present since he was nine, and were documented over five years through family accounts, school records and teachers’ observations.
Among the signs were withdrawal, delusional thinking, refusal to remove his mask, and chronic lateness caused by fear and hallucinated voices, he said.
However, the judge said the symptoms were interpreted as behavioural or disciplinary problems rather than as signs of a mental illness requiring psychiatric treatment.
Adlin said the case had laid bare how far severe mental illness could progress in a child while remaining invisible to those around him and how grave the consequences of that invisibility could be.
He expressed hope that the case would lead parents, the school system, courts and the wider public to better understand the signs and consequences of untreated mental illness in children, so symptoms could be recognised and treated early.
The judge said it is in this spirit that his decision was made, so other families could be spared what both families had suffered.
The court also found, on the evidence, that during the incident the teenager perceived the deceased not as a person but as a “non-player character (NPC)”, believed he was in a fictional parallel world, and saw the act of killing her as a move in a game that would transfer her attributes to him.
The teenager did not believe that killing her would end her life. He was in a dissociated state, in which his actions were no longer controlled by his mind.
“From this evidence, I am satisfied that the psychotic illness had, at the material time, deprived him of the capacity to comprehend that he was taking the life of a living person, as opposed to enacting a fantasy upon an object of his own delusional construction,” he said.
The judge said the psychiatric report showed that, by the time of the incident, the teenager believed he had become a god-like figure required to administer justice.
The report also observed that the teenager was acting under the direction of a commanding auditory hallucination, which he experienced as controlling him.
On September 14, the High Court acquitted and discharged the teenager of the murder charge, ordering that he be placed at Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta for a period subject to the approval of Sultan of Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah Alhaj.
He had been charged with murdering his schoolmate in the girls’ toilet at a secondary school in Bandar Utama between 9.20am and 9.35am on October 14, 2025.
