One night left three people dead and one teenager seriously injured
The appellate judgment describes a single night of violence inside a rented Yishun flat shared by two families. Zhang Meng lived there with her 17-year-old daughter Feng Jianyu. Their flatmate Yang Jie lived there with her 15-year-old daughter Li Meilin. Wang Zhijian, who had been in a relationship with Zhang, was visiting Singapore.
Between late September 18 and shortly after midnight on September 19, 2008, Zhang, Feng and Yang were killed. Li survived the attack. The four charges against Wang therefore covered three deaths and the attempted killing of the surviving teenager; Crime by Region keeps those events together as one case rather than splitting the same incident into multiple pages.
The High Court reached different conclusions on the three deaths
In 2012, the High Court convicted Wang of murder for Yang Jie's death. For the deaths of Zhang Meng and Feng Jianyu, however, the judge accepted diminished responsibility and convicted him of culpable homicide not amounting to murder instead. Wang challenged the murder conviction, while prosecutors appealed the reduction of the other two charges.
That procedural split matters. It would be inaccurate to describe the 2012 trial result as three final murder convictions, because two of those convictions only became murder convictions after the prosecution succeeded on appeal.
The Court of Appeal rejected diminished responsibility for Zhang and Feng
On November 28, 2014, the Court of Appeal held that the evidence did not establish the required substantial impairment of mental responsibility for the killings of Zhang and Feng. It allowed the prosecution's appeal, dismissed Wang's appeal and convicted him of murder under section 300(a) for all three deaths.
The appellate court imposed the death sentence for each of the three murder convictions. The final judicial record therefore supports a solved and adjudicated classification for all three killings.
Why the survivor remains central to the case
Li Meilin was 15 at the time and survived. Her presence is essential to understanding the sequence of events and the fourth criminal charge, but she is not counted as another death. The archive records her as a surviving victim and avoids using the existence of a separate attempted-murder charge to inflate the case count.
Timeline
September 18–19, 2008: Zhang Meng, Feng Jianyu and Yang Jie are killed in the Yishun flat; Li Meilin survives the attack.
November 30, 2012: the High Court convicts Wang of murder for Yang's death and of culpable homicide for the deaths of Zhang and Feng after accepting diminished responsibility in those two charges.
November 28, 2014: the Court of Appeal allows the prosecution's appeal, dismisses Wang's appeal and enters murder convictions for all three deaths.
Current status
The Yishun triple murders are Solved / Adjudicated. Wang Zhijian was convicted of murdering Zhang Meng, Feng Jianyu and Yang Jie after the Court of Appeal's 2014 decision. Li Meilin survived the same incident.