A teacher in Kandal province was charged on Saturday with stabbing his 23-year-old girlfriend to death after refusing to marry her.

Kandal’s police chief Eav Chamroeun said Rum Songheng, a local English teacher, had been charged at the provincial court with the premeditated murder of his long-term girlfriend, fellow teacher Phen Sotheavy.

“She was stabbed 28 times on her body,” he said of the brutal attack that led to Sotheavy’s death.

According to Chamroeun, police last month intervened in a dispute between the couple, who had been arguing after it emerged that Songheng was having an affair.

In an apparent effort to resolve their problems, Songheng “agreed to sign marriage certificate with her, but he then changed his mind”, Chamroeun said.

On Friday, “he led her to a secluded area and stabbed her with knives”.

Shortly after Sotheavy’s body was discovered, police arrested Songheng at a rented apartment in Sa’ang district, where he was still wearing the blood-stained clothes and in possession of the knives believed to have been used in the attack.