Wheaton man found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2019 murder
Pi Lat was insane when he stabbed his cousin's husband to death in April 2019 in a Wheaton apartment, a DuPage County judge ruled last week.
Judge Ann Celine Walsh, who found Lat not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, issued her ruling Dec. 21. Walsh ordered Pi Lat to be sent to a state mental health hospital for evaluation to see if he needs treatment.
Lat stabbed A Bawi three times in the chest and neck in Bawi's apartment on the 1400 block of North Main Street. Lat was living with his cousin and her family because he had been charged with domestic battery of his own wife.
Lat told Wheaton police that Bawi punched him first and that he used a kitchen knife to stab Bawi. He also told police there was a robber downstairs and that he thought the victim was the robber.
He later said he stabbed Bawi while Bawi was sleeping.
Lat's cousin said Lat drank heavily, spoke of ghosts coming to him and saw things that weren't there. Lat thought portraits hanging on walls were the heads of dead people, especially when he was in alcohol withdrawal, the cousin told authorities. The family had Lat hospitalized when they were living in Malaysia, she said.
He claimed television wires and the wheel nuts in a roller skate were communicating with him the night before the stabbing, the cousin said.
"Sometimes my mind is not working right," Lat told police.