Convicted for ketamine, two Hong Kong teens will age in prison
Two secondary school pupils were sentenced in the High Court yesterday for trafficking the same dangerous substance in unrelated cases that will land both in prison until they are adults.
Wong Ka-chun, 16, received a 16-year prison term after admitting to having delivered 8.33kg of ketamine for a stranger who loaned him HK$3,000. The substance was worth HK$1.2 million.
Metres away from that courtroom and on a different floor, Sampson Lui, 17, pleaded guilty to delivering 550g of ketamine, worth HK$90,000, for a friend. He was sentenced to four years and four months in prison.
Police found the drugs in Wong's rucksack on May 20. He confessed that he had agreed to deliver them in order to avoid having to repay the HK$3,000 he had borrowed.
Madam Justice Maggie Poon Man-kay, who sentenced Wong, berated the defendant, saying that she could not comprehend why young people would still commit such an offence, given the readily available information about the dangers of the activity.
"The court will show no mercy," she said. But in the end, she handed down a sentence that was well below what Wong might have faced.
Poon said the normal sentence for an offender trafficking one quarter of what Wong delivered would be 18 to 20 years in prison. She said her starting point for the sentence was 24 years.
Meanwhile, Mr Justice Poon Siu-tung said Lui, who delivered the drugs for a friend in July, initially faced a sentence of 111/2 years. But he said Lui had been trying to help a friend, not acting for financial gain.
In addition, the judge reduced Lui's sentence because of a number of factors, including an untreated case of attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Poon said his starting point for the sentence was seven years, which he further reduced given Lui's confession and the fact he had cooperated with the police investigation.
