Thieves tie up novelist and strip home of HK$5m in valuables
A successful author and art trader was held up by two armed burglars in her luxury home in Lok Ma Chau yesterday and robbed of antique jewellery worth HK$5 million.
Elisa Yu Lee-sha, 54, said she was reading alone in her two-storey house on Sam Tam Road when two men wearing surgical masks and armed with a knife and screwdriver confronted her at about 2am.
The men, who spoke Cantonese with an accent, tied her up with electrical cable and tape, stuffed her mouth with socks and pushed her into a tub, covering it with a blanket. They ransacked the house and fled with watches and jewellery, Ms Yu said. She eventually freed herself and alerted the estate's security guards, who called police at about 6.40am.
Ms Yu said a window at the back entrance of her home was damaged and some footprints were found.
Displaying bruises on her arms, she said: 'They kicked all over my body. My arms and feet swelled up and its hurts everywhere ... I was reciting the rosary [when tied up in the tub] and asked God to give me strength and, to my surprise, I was able to pull off the tape and the cables.' After checking her belongings, she said she had lost antique watches and jewellery worth HK$5 million. The most expensive item was a pair of diamonds from Cartier. She also lost a pair of gold watches that had once belonged to Sun Yat-sen and his wife.
Ms Yu, who was born in Guangdong and brought up in Singapore, immigrated to Hong Kong in 1983. She built her wealth with property developments in Macau, Singapore and Australia, and in later years began trading in art.
Since the late 1990s she has written 13 romance novels in Chinese based on her experiences. Some have been adapted into film scripts on the mainland. She said she was now working on a script for a mainland-Singapore joint venture.
Last year she initiated a lawsuit against a former business partner and art collector whom, she alleged, had stolen two paintings by Xu Beihong and Wu Zuoren worth more than HK$10 million. He accused her of defamation. The suit is still in progress.
