Baby starves to death as couple games on

A Taiwan couple has been handed down a seven-and-a-half year prison sentence after their baby starved to death while the duo were preoccupied with playing online games.

The couple, Wang Hui-huang (23) and Chu Miao-hsu (22), who were sentenced by the Taiwan High Court, and are convicted of negligence that lead to the death of their 1-year-old daughter.

The event took place in February last year, when local investigators found that the couple were playing 5 to 6 hours of subscription-based online games while their child was found dead.

The baby weighed 3.25 kilograms – only half of that of the average child.

The couple claimed that they did not know how to take care of the baby and were purely feeding their child rice, as they could not afford baby formula.

Due to the young age and financial situation, as Wang worked as a Janitor for around 10,000 Taiwan dollars (~R2,800) a month, the court then gave a lighter sentence of just over five years and four months in jail.

This is almost an identical story to reports of Korean couple who also left their baby to starve to death in March 2010 while they were preoccupied with gaming.