Throughout the 21-day trial that riveted Hong Kong for the unusual use of a gas-leaking yoga-ball as the murder weapon, prosecutor Andrew Bruce SC portrayed the incident as a deliberate murder plot executed by Khaw amid a deteriorating relationship with his wife while he was having an affair with a student, Shara Lee. When Dr. Khaw, who is Malaysian, was questioned by officers, he told them that he had transported the carbon monoxide in a yoga ball from the university to kill rats at his home. The professor suggested to police after his arrest that it was perhaps Lily who had used the gas-filled ball to commit suicide – taking her mother’s life as well – even though her friends described her in court as a teenage girl “full of life”.
– Three years after anesthesiology professor Dr. Khaw Kim-sun's wife and 16-year-old daughter were found unresponsive in a Mini Cooper in Hong Kong, Khaw has been convicted of their murders and was on Wednesday sentenced to life in prison. The case received international attention due to its bizarre mechanics: The women succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning, and a deflated yoga ball—one believed to have held the gas—found in the trunk was pinpointed as the murder weapon. The New York Times reports Khaw's lawyer argued that his daughter, Lily Li-ling Khaw, used the ball to commit suicide. It reports Gerard McCoy claimed the intense pressure Khaw, 53, put on her to succeed academically led the teen to use the ball, whose lethal nature she had been warned about, to take her life. The South China Morning Post reports McCoy offered a different possible explanation in his closing remarks, saying it was possible she used it to kill bugs, which frightened her, without understanding just how potent the gas was.