Random acid attack new type of offence: judge
Acid-throwing cases usually involve love triangles or contract revenge attacks but when Lo Ching-ho, 24, dropped a bottle of drain cleaner on six people in a busy Causeway Bay street he created a whole new category for the offence.
'There has never been any case like this, where the defendant threw acid with no particular victim in mind, but just any victim who might be there,' Mrs Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling said, convicting Lo of throwing corrosive fluid with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. 'This is a new category.'
Lo's barrister, Oliver Davies, agreed, saying there had been 'absolutely nothing like this' before.
A jury unanimously convicted Lo on the charge, which he denied, in the Court of First Instance. He pleaded guilty to a lesser alternative charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Sentencing was adjourned to December 15 pending a psychological report on him and medical and psychological reports on two victims who were seriously injured in Lockhart Road on December 12 last year.
The judge said that previous instances of the charge involved either love triangles or cases where a person attacked a stranger for money for someone who wanted revenge.
She said the courts sometimes used jail terms of 15 years as the starting point for sentencing in the love triangle situation, and 18 years for attacks for reward.
Lo, who faces a maximum penalty of life in prison, had said that a man with 'superpowers' who regularly communicated with him telepathically spurred him to carry out the attacks. He said he had been upset after having an argument with a friend and because the friend and his family were not taking his calls.
He said he carried two bottles of drain cleaner and wandered around the city aimlessly for hours before carrying out the attack.
Lo was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic in 2007 and said he stopped taking his medicine in 2008. But a psychiatrist said during the trial that Lo did not suffer from mental illness although he probably had a personality disorder.
Senior prosecutor Peggy Lo Suk-ling said yesterday that the defendant exhibited no symptoms after 2007.
Lo previously worked as a waiter at a restaurant in Disneyland, a clerk with HSBC, and as a part-time performer.
