TEMPE, Ariz. (TCN) — A jury found a mother guilty of killing her two young children by attacking them with a meat cleaver because she wanted revenge on her estranged husband.
Maricopa County court records show Yui Inoue was convicted Feb. 24 of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of child abuse, and one count of disorderly conduct in connection with the deaths of 7-year-old Kai Inoue and 9-year-old Mia Inoue. She will be sentenced March 21.
The investigation began May 15, 2021, when Tempe Police announced they were investigating homicides involving juveniles on the 4100 block of South Mills Avenue. The next day, Tempe Police identified Inoue as the suspect and shared that she was being charged with murder.
Tempe Police Sgt. Steven Carbajal said in a press conference at the time that officers responded to the home around 12:30 a.m. on May 14 for a domestic disturbance. Police separated Inoue and her husband, and the kids “were found to be OK and alive at that point.”
On May 15, Inoue flagged down a Tempe Police officer at the Apache substation and said she was “hearing voices telling her to kill her kids.” The officer found her address and went to her apartment to conduct a welfare check. Carbajal described the scene as “traumatic” for the responding officers and investigators.
Inoue’s husband was not home at the time of killings.
According to The Associated Press, Inoue left her children’s bodies under boxes and a blanket. Carbajal said both had sustained “significant injuries to their bodies, including numerous lacerations, incised wounds and some amputations, consistent with a violent attack and defensive wounds.” Additionally, Inoue reportedly brought the cleaver with her in the car when she went to the police substation.
Inoue reportedly told police she did not recall killing her kids.
Inoue and her husband were in the midst of a divorce, and she wanted money from him to move to Japan.
The Arizona Republic reports prosecutors claimed Inoue was angry at her estranged husband for calling the police the night before the murders, so she killed the children as revenge.
Maricopa County prosecutor Shaylee Beasley said in her closing statements that Inoue “tried to decapitate two souls.”
KTVK-TV reports Inoue’s defense argued the medical examiner “likened the amount of force to a guillotine,” but Inoue “is a very tiny, very slightly built woman. She doesn’t have the energy, the power, or the strength to cause that type of injury to those kids.”
Prosecutors, however, said, “Mia and Kai Inoue were sleeping soundly in their beds when their own mother came into their bedroom holding a knife. A meat cleaver that is literally designed to cut the bones of animals. And she attacked them with it. She had to think. She had to act. And there’s nothing unclear or speculative about any of that.”
