A 28-year-old man was arrested on Monday after he reportedly killed his father in Dei Thuy village, Boeung Preah Commune, Ba Phnom district, in Prey Veng province.

Ba Phnom district police chief Mom Sarom said on Monday that the son, who lived in Kampong Thom province with his wife and three-month-old daughter, attacked his 55-year-old father with a machete while he was asleep at his home in Boeung Preah commune.

“During questioning the suspect answered but could not keep to the subject. He just said he wanted to be left alone because he is suffering from mental illness.

“It was his step-mother who told me that he had attacked his father without any reason,” Sarom said.

The son’s family travelled from Kampong Thom province to visit the father on Sunday. That night the suspect took his father on a motorbike to visit a Cambodian opera concert at Bavet town.

Afterwards, they ate porridge and talked normally before going to bed early on Monday. However, when the father was sleeping alone, the son grabbed the father’s machete and hacked him twice in the neck and shoulder in blows which proved fatal.

“He always behaved strangely around the Buddhist Sabbath days. No one knows what disease he has for sure,” Sarom said.

Boeung Preah commune police chief Yi Thoeun said the father had been married three times and the suspect is the son of the second wife.

Since the suspect got married, he had lived in Kampong Thom with his wife and worked at a laundry.

He said the suspect had been diagnosed with mental illness at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh, which also prescribed him with medication.

“Despite his mental illness, legal action was taken against him for the murder. His relatives also asked the police to take legal action. However, the court is the one that will decide further on the case,” he said.

Thoeun said when police went to the scene, the suspect was kneeling before his father body, saying sorry. A machete, stained with blood was also found at the scene, he said.