A former medical student at Fudan University who was sentenced to death in February for poisoning his roommate has written a letter to the victim’s parents pleading for forgiveness. The parents have reportedly refused to take the letter from the convicted man, 28-year-old Lin Senhao.
Shanghai Daily reports:
“I am sorry for delivering such a big blow to you,” Lin writes in the letter that was seen by xinmin.cn.
“How good it would be if time could be turned back to when I first met Huang Yang and we were both full of confidence and pursuing our dreams.
“I can only say sorry. I want to kneel down to apologize, and I hope you can forgive my soul,” Lin writes.
Xinmin.cn reported that Lin was not good in expressing himself and he wrote a letter because he could not apologize face-to-face to Huang’s parents.
The report did not mention when the letter was written, but Lin handed it off just before an appeal against his death sentence next Monday. The family of the victim, Huang Yang, would not take the letter from Lin’s attorney.
Lin’s father also tried to reach out to Huang’s parents to apologize, but was refused several times.
Huang’s father
Lin was arrested in April 2013 when his roommate fell ill after drinking from a water dispenser in his dorm room and died days later due to organ failure from poisoning. Lin later confessed that he had stolen a toxic chemical and slipped it into the water as an “April Fool’s Joke”.
In May, Fudan University students drew up a petition asking the court for leniency in Lin’s case as he “did some good things at our school and is not a vicious person”.
Huang’s father spoke out against the petition, saying: “If [Lin] is not vicious, then why did he put so much of that chemical in [Huang Yang’s] water? Why did he not stop my son from drinking it? Why did he not tell a doctor about the poison as my son suffered on a hospital bed?”
He believes the petition was a way for Lin to gain sympathy ahead of his appeal trials.
[Images via Sina]
