CRIMINAL CASE NO. 190 OF 2011
COURT: Cheung Tak-cheong, you have been convicted on your own plea of the offence of attempted robbery.
The victim of the offence was a young woman who had been sent by her employer to undertake certain banking transactions at a nearby branch of the Hang Seng Bank. Those transactions included the cashing of cheques, and so when she left the bank, she was carrying a brown envelope containing $116,078.
After walking back to the building where her employer’s premises were located, she was waiting for the lift to arrive when you grabbed her neck from behind. She dodged and turned around. You then used a stun gun to give her an electric shock in her upper chest, and made a grab for the envelope containing the money.
Despite the pain and numbness from the electric shock she was suffering, she was courageous enough not to release the envelope, and put up a struggle. During the struggle, still suffering numbness, she fell to the ground, but then managed to get up and run out of the building, crying for help. You chased after her, but then a passer-by chased after you. You fled along the road and were seen to enter a nearby building, where the police later found you hiding in a light shaft.
You told the police that you had used the stun gun to rob because you had a credit card debt. You showed the police where you had placed the stun gun. When the electrodes were connected to a resistor load of resistance close to a human body, the peak to peak pulsating voltage generated was measured to be 33.47 kilovolts. The device was found capable of generating 234 high voltage pulses continuously in three seconds’ duration.
The victim attended hospital after the attack and was found to still have tenderness in her chest area and right arm.
I have listened to the eloquent submissions made by your counsel, Mr Stirling, on your behalf. I have also read the letters that have been submitted to the court written by you and your parents. I bear in mind that you are a man of 44, who, up to the moment you committed this serious offence, had lived an honest and law-abiding life. I also bear in mind that this offence was committed by you on your own, and that it occurred in the daytime. I am prepared to accept that this offence was committed by you as a result of a very large credit card debt which was preying on your mind.
I have no doubt that you now genuinely bitterly regret what you did that day. This, however, was a very serious offence, with a number of aggravating features. As I said to Mr Stirling during his speech in mitigation, I do not accept that this was an offence committed on momentary impulse. It was clearly a planned attempt to rob someone who had just withdrawn a substantial sum of money from the bank.
The victim in this case was a young woman who was innocently carrying out her employer’s instructions to withdraw money from the bank. She was entitled to expect that she could walk back to her employer’s premises without fear of being robbed. What is more, this was a robbery that was committed by you within the common parts of a private building as the victim was waiting for a lift.
Even more serious is the fact that you not only used physical violence on her, but actually discharged your stun gun at her chest area.
This court is bound to pass a sentence that will deter others contemplating the use of a stun gun in the course of an attempted robbery.
Bearing in mind all these features, I cannot adopt a starting point less than 9 years’ imprisonment in this case. Bearing in mind your previous good character and your plea of guilty, which indicates your remorse, I am prepared to give you a discount of one-third from that starting point.
I sentence you to 6 years’ imprisonment.