Ship’s cook admits killing
the captain and first mateThe Chinese national reaches a deal
with prosecutors that will reduce
his sentence
A Chinese cook aboard a Taiwanese fishing vessel has admitted stabbing the captain and first mate to death and taking control of the ship's bridge for two days.
Shi Lei, 23 -- who has been in federal custody since his arrest March 21, 2002, after U.S. Coast Guard officials boarded the vessel -- entered a plea in U.S. District Court yesterday to the charge of interfering with a ship's navigation, just days before he was to go to trial.
He had been facing life imprisonment if convicted of murder, but if the court accepts the plea agreement, Shi faces between 24 and 30 years in federal prison for seizing control of the ship after killing the captain, Chen Chung-she of Taiwan, and first mate Li Dafeng of China, and using violence or threats against the crew, endangering the ship's safe navigation.
He will be sentenced May 20.
Deputy public defender Pamela Byrne said yesterday that Shi is "very, very sorry that the captain and first mate died."
Byrne said Shi stabbed the captain because he had attacked Shi, who was resting, and began beating him -- the captain's way of disciplining the crew.
In March 2002, the Full Means No. 2 had been at sea a year without the crew setting foot on land when Shi, the ship's cook, was dismissed by the ship's first mate because of complaints by other crew members, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Brady.
Shi was reassigned to the more physically demanding role as deck hand, pulling in nets and fish and cleaning the nets, Brady said.
According to the plea agreement, Shi approached the captain on March 14, 2002, and told him he no longer wanted to work and wanted to return to China, but the captain refused, Brady said.
After two days of working as a deck hand, Shi began slacking off in retaliation for the captain denying his request.
The captain struck him several times. Shi did not fight back but was angry at the captain, Brady said.
Several hours later, Shi went to the bridge with a knife in his pocket. He confronted the first mate with whom he had talked with earlier about wanting to return to China. When the first mate summoned the captain, Shi said he pulled the knife and stabbed the captain in the chest. He also swung the knife several times, stabbing the first mate.
"I was really angry, and after, I kill the captain and first mate," Shi told the court yesterday through an interpreter, when asked by U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor to describe what he did.
Shi remained on the bridge armed with knives but was overpowered by crew members two days later and locked in a storage compartment, where Coast Guard officials found him after boarding the ship.
After the hearing, Byrne said Shi agreed to plead guilty because had he gone to trial and been acquitted, the U.S. government would have had him deported back to China where he would have been tried a second time for the murders and executed.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft had decided previously that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty against Shi.