Wenda Zeng

"Every time I saw Wenda he had a smile on his face." - Shirley Hancock (Wenda's teacher). See also A Boy Called Wonder by 1News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIHYJ6FmQ3o

A former high-ranking officer in the Chinese Army who murdered his 10-year-old stepson was today jailed for life with a non-parole period of 14 years. In the High Court at Auckland today Justice Robert Chambers said Zhen Huan Li said Li, 41, had committed an "appalling" murder and had nearly killed his wife in the same attack. Li earlier admitted murdering Wenda Zeng and attempting to murder his wife, Hua Dai, an academic working at Auckland University. He attacked them with a steel table leg in their Birkenhead apartment on September 4 last year. "An innocent child was repeatedly struck on the head with a table leg and killed, the judge said. Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/14-years-jail-for-man-who-murdered-hi....

Li attacked them with a steel table leg in their Birkenhead apartment on September 4 last year. Wonder's life support was turned off after eight days in hospital and Ms Dai had brain surgery and lay in a coma for a month. He said Li had been a high-ranked officer in the Chinese Army and could be receiving a pension. Li had a teenage son in China, and his financial declaration should include any maintenance payments he made. Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/judge-tells-killer-to-be-generous/SS6....

The victim of an attempted murder in September 2002, North Shore mum Hua Dai was brutally beaten with the leg of a dining table by her husband and spent 21 days in a coma. When she woke up in hospital, her only child had been laid to rest. Her husband, Zhen Huan Li, was given a life sentence in 2003 for murdering his 10-year-old stepson, Wonder Zeng (also known as Wenda). What followed was almost eight years of getting by on ACC benefits while Dai started to come to terms with the tragedy, and work through her rehabilitation, having suf­fered a severe head injury. Source: The New Zealand Herald, 17 Sep 2014

Zhen Huan Li has admitted murdering Wonder and attempting to murder Ms Dai. During his trial, Li said he deeply resented Ms Dai for withdrawing her support for his New Zealand residency application. A few days before the attack he told a member of his church how he had abandoned a plan to beat Wonder to death with a table leg in front of his mother and, when she phoned the police, to kill her. But he went ahead with the murderous plan. Ms Dai said in evidence that she was on the phone to a friend when Li called out to her from behind to turn around. He was blocking the exit to the stairs and holding a table leg above Wonder. Ms Dai told the court she did not want to say anything, or plead or cry, and turned away. She remembered Li hitting her once very hard on the back of the head, but the Crown said Li inflicted several blows with the weapon. She fell to the floor and drifted in and out of consciousness. Ms Dai says she did not see Wonder being attacked but heard him cry out. Ms Dai describes Wonder as her "joy, my everything" and she is determined to "learn all the lessons I need to learn" from his death. He had contacted her in the late 1980s after reading a poem she had published in an Army newsletter. Li married a girlfriend in 1990 and Ms Dai married Zhi Hong Zeng, with whom she had Wonder in 1991. The marriage ended in 1996. Li made contact with Ms Dai, who moved to Sydney and graduated as a top MA student. Back in China, Li divorced his wife and in February 2000 he and Ms Dai married. "He was very bad to me ... He just wanted me to make money and have no joy in life." Ms Dai says Li was not interested in the marriage. He wanted residency and used the union as a disguise. "I did not want to cheat on my own heart, nor the system. I withdrew my support." She says Li visited China and told her mother he wanted to kill Ms Dai. Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/writing-helps-mother-to-cope-with-los...