COURT: The defendant had pleaded guilty in the Magistrates’ Court to four counts of attempted murder. He had been committed to this court for sentence.
The facts show that on 11 October, the four victims who were casual friends had gone for their usual morning exercise in Garden Hill in Sham Shui Po. While the fourth witness, Madam Lam, was exercising, she noticed the defendant standing near for almost an hour and none of the victims had known the defendant prior to that day.
Suddenly, at about shortly after 10 am, the defendant suddenly attacked Madam Lam with a fruit knife, stabbing her twice on her back and once on her neck. Madam Lam was bleeding and severely injured. At the same time, the first to the third witnesses, that is Madam Wu, Madam Liu and Madam Zhang, were nearby and they were alerted and ran away immediately. However, the defendant chased them and attacked them as well and stabbed them with the same fruit knife.
Madam Wu, the first prosecution witness, was stabbed on the neck, the abdomen and the back, Madam Liu was stabbed on the back and rear neck, and Madam Zhang was stabbed on the left chest and slashed on the left side of the neck and shoulder. After that attack, the defendant fled. And the attack was witnessed by PW5 in the list of witnesses who then called for help.
A fruit knife was subsequently found with bloodstain on the pedestrian path about 300 metres from the scene. All four victims were sent to hospital, and PW1 and PW4 were in critical condition when admitted to hospital.
Now, the police naturally had a hard time investigating this case but they very carefully analysed the CCTV footages of the vicinity and it was discovered subsequently that the defendant was, at the material time, living in the YHA Mei Ho House Youth Hostel which was located near Garden Hill. So on 12 October, the defendant was placed on the wanted and stop list.
It was on 13 October when the defendant entered Hong Kong via the Shenzhen Bay Control Point when he was stopped and arrested later by the police.
He was subsequently interviewed on video by the police and he admitted to the attack on the victims. He said that he had tried to kill himself a number of times but he failed. So he had the idea of assaulting people and he said that he targeted the four victims randomly. He had no grudges with them. When he saw them, he thought it was a chance for him to commit the offence and get sentenced. He wanted to stab the four ladies to death and to be sentenced to imprisonment or the death penalty.
He then gave a description of the attack on the four victims and he said that he thought he had to stab someone to death so that he would get the death penalty. He knew there is no death penalty in Hong Kong and he wanted to assault these victims and wanted to kill people and then run away to the mainland and be sentenced to death in the mainland.
He said that after the attack, he abandoned the knife and then he took a taxi, intending to go back to the mainland. On the way, he stopped at a toilet, at a public toilet near Tai Po where he washed himself and disposed of the knife holder. He then took the MTR to Lowu Control Point to leave Hong Kong. He did not have any identification document with him so he then reported to the police that he had lost his two-way permit. He was then told he could return to the mainland with his passport. So he returned to the youth hostel to get his passport and changed his clothes. And eventually he returned to the mainland.
He said he had bought the knife on 3 October after arriving in Hong Kong at a supermarket. He originally intended to use that knife to kill himself but he did not have the courage to do so.
He said when he returned to the mainland, he dyed his hair and then he had called the public security authorities on the mainland to turn himself in. However, he was told he could not be arrested for an offence committed in Hong Kong.
The four victims had to undergo emergency operations at the hospital. The first victim underwent emergency operation on the same day and subsequently was discharged on 18 October and readmitted on 30 October when she was found to have mild hydrocephalus. She later recovered and was discharged on 4 November, and subsequent follow-up found that her wounds were healing properly.
In relation to the second victim, she was admitted to the hospital and her wounds were sutured and she was discharged on 14 October.
The third victim, she was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the intensive care unit and surgery was done for her wounds and she was found to have a collapsed fracture of the L2 vertebra in the lumbar spine and that was treated with bracing. She was subsequently discharged on 22 October with no follow-up arranged.
Finally, the fourth victim suffered also multiple injuries and her pulmonary laceration was repaired with suture, stab wounds were sutured and bilateral chest drains were inserted for post-operative care. She was given a follow-up examination on 5 November and was found the wounds did not result in a physical disability and no long-term follow-up was required.
The fourth victim was subsequently transferred from Prince of Wales Hospital to Shatin Hospital for her psychiatric condition on 16 October because the fourth victim had a history of anxiety disorder and because of this attack, she was suffering from insomnia and suffered from recurrent flashback of the incident. So her diagnoses were delusional disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. She was treated and subsequently discharged on 29 November 2019 and given medication and follow-up. So in fact, the fourth victim did suffer, apart from her physical condition, post-traumatic stress disorder.
An identification parade was subsequently held, and PW2 and 3, that is the second and third victims, positively identified the defendant as the culprit who attacked them, and these identification parades were held on 15 October and 18 December respectively.
Now, this was a completely cowardly and unprovoked attack on four helpless and innocent ladies who were out just doing their morning exercises.
Before sentencing, I called for a psychiatric report on the defendant. Now, it is clear and also as part of the mitigation of Mr Wong shows that the defendant had a history of depression when he was growing up on the mainland. When he was small and in primary school, there was a history of being bullied by classmates because he had a sphincter problem and that therefore he did not have a happy time when he was in primary school.
However, his sphincter function improved after operation and so when he grew older in high school, in secondary school he had made some good friends. He had above average academic performance and eventually he was admitted to the Henan Industrial University to study electronic engineering. And at the time of the offence, he was a Year 4 student and he denied any substance abuse and he was a social drinker.
The psychiatric history was really obtained from the defendant’s father who reported that the defendant had expressed passive death wish since Primary 3. That may be due to his being bullied in primary school. He had throughout harboured fleeting suicidal tendency like when he was at secondary school in around 2015, he wanted to jump from a height because of the stress of school work, and he did write a suicide note to his parents but when he went to the roof of a building near his home, he had no courage to jump, he told a psychiatrist, and so he decided to fast himself to death on the rooftop. However, he was eventually found by his parents and friend and so he then gave up that idea.
And in university, he said he disliked some classmates because of the bureaucracy and the cheating of some of his classmates. However, there was no history of violence as reported.
But the defendant’s family felt that he seems to have a worsening of his mental condition in July 2019 and his father wanted to visit him in university in October but the defendant told him to do so later as he was preparing for graduate school. And the defendant then said he had thoughts of hopelessness and uselessness in September 2019. And then he thought he wanted to enjoy himself before ending his life, so he went and visited friends in the mainland to enjoy himself, and then he visited Shenzhen before coming to Hong Kong in October.
Now, defendant then gave an account of his life coming to Hong Kong prior to the offence to the psychiatrist. He said that he, when in Shenzhen, found an escort as he was worried about feeling lonely and they came to Hong Kong together. They went to Disneyland and Victoria Harbour and the defendant recalled that he bought a knife and a pair of scissors in a store as he wanted to commit suicide by slashing his wrist with a knife. And he said he paid for the shopping of the escort and then the escort went back to Shenzhen after four days.
He said he subsequently went to Ocean Park but felt lonely, so he found another escort in Hong Kong but then they had a dispute and the escort had taken the mobile phone that he had paid for her back to the mainland. So he was angry and disappointed and he felt he could not control himself anymore and he said his instinct took over him. And he said he then went to the toilet to try to slash his wrist but he did not do so.
And then he felt that he changed his suicidal intent to one of taking violent action. He felt he was losing it and so that he was then preoccupied with the idea of harming others to help himself find his true self. He went on the internet and read that he could be extradited back to mainland China to receive the death penalty, he said, if he committed a serious offence in Hong Kong, and that is why he then went to Garden Hill and he saw the ladies and he thought that by chopping them it would relieve his own pain, and that is what happened.
He was observed by the psychiatrist to have a stable mood during his initial remand in Siu Lam. But his condition worsened in Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre and he was transferred back to Siu Lam because he had thought of hanging himself with a bedsheet at night. And so he was transferred back to Siu Lam and diagnosed with adjustment reaction difficulty and so he was then treated and discharged. And he said to the psychiatrist he preferred the environment in Siu Lam because it was quiet and he liked the discipline there.
He said that he tried several times to kill himself and on 30 September he then was transferred back to Siu Lam. He said on 30 September 2020, he was transferred back to Siu Lam. However, his mood deteriorated in January and he complained of low mood for more than two weeks, and so one could see from the history as described by the psychiatrist that his mood was up and down.
He was then seen by a clinical psychologist on 12 May 2022 and given tests and he was found that the tests he took suggested he had features of obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
Now, as far as his present mental state examination is concerned, it is the opinion of Dr Tang, the visiting psychiatrist of Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre, that he has an obsessive compulsive personality difficulty with maladaptive stress-coping strategy. The repeated self-harm history and rapid change from self-harm to violent thoughts, in the opinion of Dr Tang, pose a high risk of self-harm or violence on the defendant and it reveals a high degree of unpredictability on the defendant’s behaviour.
However, Dr Tang said he had shown improvement in his mood fluctuation and impulsivity in the recent year in Siu Lam and it is likely due to the biological, that is the anti-depressants, and psychological treatment. And so Dr Tang is of the opinion that no in-patient psychiatric management is required. However, he should still continue to receive psychiatric and psychological follow-up in the long run. So really, what Dr Tang is saying is that he does not need an in-hospital order.
Now, this is a very serious offence. The aggravating feature in this case is that there were multiple victims, totally unprovoked. After stabbing the first victim, when the other three ran away, he could have stopped himself but instead he chased after the three victims and stabbed them. That is an aggravating feature. He also bought the knife for no other purpose, intending to use it on himself initially and then on the victims which he chose at random.
Apart from the obvious deterrence in the sentence that is needed, it is also shown that the defendant is both a danger to himself and to society at this point. So obviously some time in an institutional environment would hopefully help him recover.
I have read the very heart-breaking letter from the defendant’s parents. As all parents are willing to do, they have pleaded for this court to be lenient. However, these offences are much too serious and society has to be protected in this case. And in this case it was a very cowardly attack on these four victims because really basically the defendant was too cowardly to kill himself, so he wanted to harm the victims, to kill the victims in order that the government can then kill him.
Well, we have no death penalty in Hong Kong and we can only hope that the imprisonment that is handed out to the defendant will help him in the future and that also that he will not continue to harbour these violent tendencies with the help of psychological and psychiatric counselling.
Now, there is no guideline sentencing for offences of this nature. Each offence must be tailored to the circumstances of the case. The attack on each victim, as I have said, was cowardly and unprovoked and I would adopt a sentencing starting point on each charge of 15 years’ imprisonment. Because the defendant had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, I would reduce it to, on each charge, to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Now, I have to consider the totality principle and so I will sentence the defendant in the following manner: on the 1st count, he is sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment; on the 2nd count, he is sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment with 2 years to be consecutive to the 1st count; on the 3rd count, he is sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment with 2 years of that sentence to be consecutive to the sentence in the 1st and 2nd count; and then on the 4th count, he is sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment with 2 years to be consecutive to the previous count, thus giving a total of 16 years’ imprisonment.
So the defendant goes to prison for 16 years.