KEY POINTS

  • The incident occurred on March 28, 2019, when he got into an argument with the victim
  •  His daughter-in-law died of her injuries at a local hospital
  • Apart from the prison sentence, he was also handed five years’ post-release supervision

An elderly Queens man, who fatally stabbed his daughter-in-law in a fit of rage in broad daylight, was sentenced to 21 years in prison Wednesday, officials said.

Dahe Lin, 77, who was facing the charge of first-degree manslaughter pleaded not guilty last month. In addition to the 21-year prison sentence, he was handed five years’ post-release supervision, Queens County District Attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a statement.

The crime took place on March 28, 2019, when Lin and his daughter-in-law Wen Ying He, 50, got into an argument outside the family’s home on Suydam Street in Ridgewood.

knife-5034556_1920
The man reportedly plunged a kitchen knife into his daughter-in-law’s neck. Pixabay

A bystander spotted Lin choking Ying He and helped pull the elderly man off the woman as other panicked neighbors flagged down a passing police car.

Still undaunted, Lin rushed into the house and returned with a kitchen knife, which he reportedly plunged into his daughter-in-law’s neck, according to the statement.

“We kicked him and we got him off of her and he ran inside,” the bystander who first intervened had told the New York Daily News last year on condition of anonymity. “She got up, she was kind of staggering around ... He came back out with a giant kitchen knife and started stabbing her."

Lin was arrested on the scene and his daughter-in-law was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries later.

“This defendant viciously attacked the wife of his son and murdered her on a public street in plain view of witnesses,” Katz said in the statement. The reason behind Lin’s deadly rage wasn’t known.

In a case of murder-suicide in September, a 78-year-old Pennsylvania man fatally shot both his son and daughter-in-law before turning the gun on himself. Deputies who arrived at the scene found the man, Gerald Mihalcik, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and recovered the bodies of his daughter-in-law, Rebecca Evans, 51, and son, Stephen Mihalcik, 56, from the scene. Authorities said the exact motive behind the murder-suicide couldn’t be speculated but said it may have links to domestic violence.

RELATED STORIES