When a schizophrenic policeman shot and killed a young man in a Hong Kong police station interrogation room
- A Hong Kong man, 24, arrested for not having his ID card, was fatally shot by an officer in an interrogation room at Aberdeen police station in 1997
- The officer who killed Chan Kwok-keung had been seeing psychologists, it emerged. Convicted of manslaughter, he was sent to a psychiatric centre indefinitely
“‘What kind of world do we live in that you can get killed for not having your ID card?’”, asked the mother of Chan Kwok-keung in the South China Morning Post on November 3, 1997.
“‘He’s not an illegal immigrant. He was born and raised here,’ said Ms Chan of her son, who “was shot in the arm, shoulder and neck” while being questioned in a police interrogation room.
“The 27-year-old police constable, arrested yesterday for shooting dead [the] young suspect in Aberdeen Police Station, [had, it turned out] spent two years being seen by police psychologists.”
A day later, the Post reported that, indeed, the constable “had received psychological counselling after seeing a colleague shoot himself dead in 1994”.
A November 4 Post article described the shooting victim as a “pill-popping dropout who remained a loyal son”, but a day later the paper reported that Chan’s family had received information from the police, after which the victim’s younger brother stated that “‘there were no traces of drugs in his body and there was no confrontation between my brother and the police. It’s all the fault of the police’.
“‘We will ask people from the Legal Aid Department how to pursue a court case against the police. It is the only way to make things right,’” said another family member.
“Son’s family not told of killer’s trial”, read a headline on July 31, 1998, on a report which said “Officer Yau Chun-sing, 27, pleaded guilty in the Court of First Instance to manslaughter […] but the officer denied murder, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and his plea was accepted.
“Yau had been suffering from schizophrenia at the time of the killing,” and “was sent to a psychiatric centre indefinitely”.
