A 17-year-old stood trial yesterday for allegedly luring two female classmates into a forest, where he and two accomplices brutally murdered them to steal a Scoopy motorbike.

Hul Samnang, a student at the Methodist School of Cambodia in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district, faces charges of intentional murder under aggravated circumstances for the July killing of 16-year-old Choub Srey Leak and 19-year-old Vorn Leakhena.

“He brought [the victims] to meet with his two friends – who are former prisoners – in a faraway place in Kraing Thnong commune, where they killed and robbed the girls,” said Hin Sokheng, deputy chief of the Municipal Serious Penal Police Unit, who added that the victims were close friends of Samnang.

Under the guise of going on a motorbike ride after class on July 22, Samnang directed Leakhena to where his accomplices waited, Sokheng said.

Once there, they threatened the victims with a knife and ordered them to get off Leakhena’s bike, Sokheng said. After the victims got off the bike, the second accomplice tied their hands and feet with cloth, and then strangled each with electrical wire.

After the murder, Samnang’s two cohorts sold the motorbike to Phorn Sarom, 28, in Kampong Speu province, Sokheng said.

Sarom is being tried for receiving stolen property.

The two alleged accomplices remain at large.

In court, Samnang said he was at home at the time of the murder.

Verdicts are to be handed down on March 4.