Arizona mom who killed her 2 kids with meat cleaver in 2021 sentenced to life in prison

PHOENIX – An Arizona mother who killed her two young children with a meat cleaver four years ago will spend the rest of her life behind bars after being sentenced last week.

A jury previously found 44-year-old Yui Inoue guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of child abuse and one count of disorderly conduct in connection with the slayings of her 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.

She received life sentences Friday for each of the murder charges and 35 years to be served consecutively for the other offenses, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

What happened before Yui Inoue killed her kids with a meat cleaver?

Inoue and her husband filed for divorce a month before the May 2021 slayings but were still living together in an apartment near Mill and Southern avenues in Tempe.

Hours before the murders, the husband called the Tempe Police Department to report that they’d been arguing and she used a meat cleaver to destroy his computer and other electronics.

At some point after officers left the apartment, Inoue held each child down on the floor and fatally attacked them with the cleaver, prosecutors said.

She later went to a Tempe police station and said she heard voices in her head telling she’d killed her children.

Officers responded to the apartment and found the young victims’ bodies covered by trash, boxes, a mattress and other items. They also found the meat cleaver in her car in a bag containing blood-stained clothing.

When questioned by police through a Japanese interpreter, Inoue said she woke up around 4:30 a.m. with blood on her hands and arms. She found her children dead but said she had no memory of doing anything to them.

“As monstrous as this crime was, the greater tragedy is that it is not unique,” County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said in a press release. “Far too often, members of my prosecutorial teams are exposed to this kind of criminal depravity. I applaud those who put this defendant in prison.”

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