‘My children are with their parents’: Mom who butchered 7-year-old and 9-year-old with meat cleaver while they were ‘sleeping soundly’ fails to accept responsibility

An Arizona parent who murdered her 2 kids, ages 7 and 9, utilizing a nutrient cleaver “designed to chopped the bones of animals” volition dice down bars aft being handed 2 consecutive beingness sentences connected Friday for her heinous crimes.

Yui Inoue, 44, was sentenced by Maricopa County Superior Judge Jeffrey Rueter, according to AZFamily, and helium didn’t mince words erstwhile speaking to her.

“Words can’t adequately picture what occurred,” Rueter said, per AZFamily.

“I can’t ideate what those children went done successful their past minutes,” helium told the court. “The fear, the pain, the suffering. It’s incomprehensible.”

Inoue, who spoke done a Japanese interpreter, said that she believed her children were not dead. She was fixed the 2 beingness sentences positive 2 20-year sentences to beryllium served consecutively.

“They are spending clip with my parents,” Inoue reportedly said. “I emotion my children precise overmuch truthful it’s precise strange. My children are with my parents.”

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Inoue, who lived successful Tempe, was accused of sidesplitting her 2 kids successful a heinous 2021 execution case that wrapped up successful February with her conviction.

“Mia and Kai Inoue were sleeping soundly successful their beds erstwhile their ain parent came into their chamber holding a knife, a nutrient cleaver … and she attacked them with it,” prosecutors said during closing arguments, according to AZFamily. “She had to think. She had to act. And there’s thing unclear oregon speculative astir immoderate of that.”

A Maricopa County assemblage recovered Inoue blameworthy of 2 counts of first-degree murder and 2 counts of child abuse successful transportation to a anterior probe by the Arizona Department of Child Safety and the May 2021 murders of her children Mia and Kai Inoue, who were identified by local officials.

Prosecutors accidental Inoue acceptable upon her 2 children aft claiming to perceive “voices telling her to kill” them. She called 911 afterward and past went to emblem down officers astatine a constabulary substation connected East Apache Boulevard adjacent Arizona State University. The distraught parent was chiefly speaking Japanese, constabulary said, and she reportedly confessed to the officers connected the spot astir the slayings. Authorities went up to her flat successful effect and recovered the mutilated bodies of Inoue’s kids.

“[S]he was proceeding voices telling her to termination her children,” charging documents said.

Inoue aboriginal told constabulary that she woke up with humor connected her hands astir 4:30 a.m. to find her children dormant and besides covered successful humor adjacent a doorway. After that, she said she took a bath and yet “woke up” to the world of the unit she committed. Her lawyers assertion Inoue had nary representation of carrying retired the killings. According to section ABC affiliate KNXV, Tempe constabulary said a blood-soaked nutrient cleaver was discovered wrong the conveyance Inoue drove to the constabulary substation.

“We are present due to the fact that this pistillate tried to decapitate 2 souls,” said Maricopa County authoritative Shaylee Beasley during her closing arguments successful February, according to the Arizona Republic.

Beasley described successful item however Inoue “delivered chop aft chop” to the children portion they some “tried to support their heads.” She reportedly showed close-up photos of the children’s horrific injuries to the assemblage and claimed their deaths were connected to a bitter divorcement she was having with their father.

Inoue’s attorney, Rebecca Felmly, had antecedently said that she believed determination was capable tenable uncertainty presented astatine Inoue’s proceedings for the assemblage to present a verdict of not guilty. During her archetypal tribunal quality successful 2021, Inoue told the justice “I did not termination anybody” done her interpreter.

“(The aesculapian examiner) likened the magnitude of unit to a guillotine,” Felmly said, according to AZFamily. “She is simply a precise tiny, precise slightly-built woman. She doesn’t person the energy, the power, oregon the spot to origin that benignant of wounded to those kids.”

The kid maltreatment lawsuit that Inoue was convicted of stemmed from a study made by Inoue’s hubby successful March 2021 — conscionable months earlier the killings — saying Inoue “took Kai” and their whereabouts were unknown. “Police yet located Ms. Inoue and Kai down a convenience store,” DCS officials said successful a May 2021 statement. “Ms. Inoue was taken to a psychiatric infirmary and Kai was returned to his father.”

DCS investigators said they did not observe immoderate “visible signs of maltreatment oregon neglect connected the children” and the kids claimed “they felt harmless with their parents.” The probe did not find immoderate grounds to warrant removal from the home, according to DCS officials.

Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.