ATLANTIC CITY - Authorities investigating the stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists during a mugging said Wednesday that the victims were a 47-year-old woman and her 80-year-old mother, who tried to aid her.
Po Lin Wan and her daughter Alice Mei See Leung, both from the Scarborough section of Toronto, were killed by a Philadelphia woman across the street from Bally’s Atlantic City, the Atlantic County prosecutor’s office said.
The office also corrected a chronology of the attack it initially released Tuesday night.
It said Wednesday that the younger woman was being stabbed numerous times in her upper body with a 12-inch butcher knife when her mother came to her aid and was also stabbed.
Autopsy results determined that Po Lin Wan bled to death, while her daughter died from being stabbed in the heart. A prosecutor’s office news release Tuesday night had reversed their causes of death.
Authorities said the suspect, Antoinette Pelzer, was trying to steal a pocketbook from one of the women.
Pelzer is charged with murder and was being held on $1.5 million bail.
Her aunt says Pelzer has been homeless and mentally ill for years.
During her initial court appearance Tuesday, Pelzer acted strangely by laughing, frowning, grimacing, and repeatedly asking where her lawyer was.
The attack took place a half-block from a hospital trauma center, and a police officer who saw it happening ordered Pelzer to drop the knife, which she did, authorities said.
Pelzer had been living in an Ohio shelter until December, when her mother brought her back to Philadelphia, said Pelzer’s aunt Nadine King, also of Philadelphia.