An ex-convict was arrested after hacking his father to death with an axe in Battambang’s Robos Mongkol commune on Wednesday.

According to Mong Russey district police chief Keat Heang, 40-year-old Burng Sok struck his 60-year-old father, Pich Burng, on the back of his head and his face a total of four times with an axe as he slept under their raised wooden hut.

Sok, a former soldier in Battambang, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2002 for shooting his boss to death, and was only released two years ago.

“The mother saw her son attacking his father, but she could not do anything because he was holding an axe,” Heang said.

“She was screaming.”

Heang added that according to Sok’s mother, her son was mentally ill – though no formal diagnosis has ever been made – but had never “caused any trouble because of his illness” or gotten into an argument with his father.

“He did not get any medication for his illness, presumably because they lived in the countryside,” he said, adding that he was unaware if mental illness had been the reason for Sok’s crime two years ago.

Sok was arrested by district police in a forest 3 to 4 kilometres away from his house, where he had fled after the murder.