A 23-year-old woman murdered her parents and committed suicide on Father’s Day over her apparent frustrations with the skin condition eczema, according to Hong Kong police.
The bodies of former nursing student Pang Ching-yu and her parents were discovered by police after a family member reported that no one answered the door at their Tuen Mun apartment, about 15 miles from the center of Hong Kong, CNN reported.
The troubled young woman attacked her parents with a nearly foot-long knife, stabbing her father fatally in the chest and her mother in the chest, waist and legs, the police report stated, according to CNN.
The suspected murder weapon was discovered at the scene, along with the daughter’s body and a suicide note detailing her long-term struggles with eczema.
The woman had also previously posted about her skin condition in an online forum and blamed her parents for it.
“People with eczema giving birth to kids are worse than poor people giving birth to kids,” she wrote. “If you’re poor, you can rely on your own hard work. With eczema, sorry, you have to suffer (your whole life) with no change.”
She said that her experience with the condition destroyed her social life and left her feeling like “there’s nothing you can do except to wait and die.”
Eczema is a treatable condition that causes the skin to become red, itchy and inflamed, sometimes blistering with fluid. An affected person’s skin can become patchy with rashes that can thicken and scale over time. The disease can be hereditary and is often worsened by other factors like pollution and stress. There is no cure for eczema, but patients are typically instructed by doctors to avoid triggers like perfumed soaps and can be prescribed topical medications to alleviate symptoms.
About 30% of the U.S. population has eczema — with the condition mostly affecting kids, according to the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. These children are “more likely to develop atopic dermatitis (eczema) than children of parents without allergic diseases,” the institute said.
