'Professor' jailed for airport thefts
Man claiming to be mainland politics lecturer caught shoplifting then stealing tourist's bag
A man describing himself as a mainland university professor was jailed yesterday for eight months and eight days for shoplifting at Chek Lap Kok - then being caught again at the airport stealing a woman's bag while on police bail.
Li Chunjiang, 46, was told by Tsuen Wan magistrate Lambert Lee Ka-chai that he had to go to prison because theft at an airport was a "serious" crime.
Li, who claimed to be a politics professor, had been remanded for nearly a month before yesterday's sentencing.
He had earlier pleaded guilty to three counts of theft and one count of obstructing public officers.
Outside court, his lawyers Jeffrey Tam and Bruce Liu Sing-lee would not say which college he worked at or which subject he was teaching.
Tam told the court that Li, whose wife and 10-year-old twins are living in Beijing, was employed by a Hong Kong company on a HK$30,000-a-month salary when he committed the crimes.
The court heard that Li stole 46 Chinese-language books on cooking and politics, worth a total of HK$5,570, from bookstores Relay and Page One at Hong Kong International Airport between April 28 and 29.
Li was intercepted on April 29 by a police officer who saw him acting suspiciously and found his luggage full of books.
He was unable to explain where the books came from but price tags led officers to check the two book shops' closed-circuit television which revealed footage of Li at the shops.
Then, on June 20, while on police bail, he stole a female tourist's tote bag outside a Starbucks café at the airport.
The café's closed-circuit television footage showed Li taking the white tote bag from a chair and fleeing.
When Li was arrested for the new offence, he refused to have his fingerprints taken by police.
"What [Li] did was not pickpocketing, but was merely picking something up in passing," Tam said in mitigation yesterday
He also said the items in the bag were not valuable.
