A sobbing housewife told a court yesterday she was scarred for life when a robber slashed her 'as if he was slaughtering a pig'. Tsui Shun-tong, 52, said she was attacked when the robber rejected her $16, the only money she had with her. 'The man slashed me with the knife on my face. I put up my arm to ward him off. If he had slashed my neck I would have been dead,' Mrs Tsui told the judge. She gave a graphic courtroom reconstruction of the way in which serial robber Wong Ping-kuen, 34, cut her with a knife. 'I said I did not have money. I was still holding $16. But he did not want it. He kept on slashing my face like slaughtering a pig,' Mrs Tsui said. Prosecutor Edward Brook said: 'She begged for mercy. Her hand was also cut trying to grab the knife.' The woman's ordeal came to an end when she screamed for help and her husband arrived on the scene, forcing Wong to flee. Wong was jailed for 51/2 years when he pleaded guilty to assaulting Mrs Tsui with intent to rob her. He also admitted six other similar robberies. Mrs Tsui was called as witness because Wong claimed she was cut by accident during a struggle, but he abandoned the claim after she had given evidence. Mr Justice Thomas Gall said Wong preyed on vulnerable women shoppers, ambushing them on stairways at times when their husbands were likely to be at work. 'This was a planned, careful, and systematic approach to gaining the money you needed,' he told Wong. The robber's victims were attacked in Kowloon between October 12 and November 1 last year. He was arrested in Fuk Wah Street, Kowloon, by police officers who found him to be in possession of a paper cutter. When questioned he admitted the robberies. Rodney Pritchard, defending, said Wong was a drug addict driven to rob to feed his $200 a day habit. He was desperate after the restaurant where he had been working closed down and he found himself without work, the High Court heard. Mr Pritchard said Wong's parents divorced when he was five and his mother sent him to a boarding school which was 'not exactly Eton'. Wong left the school and had to fend for himself from the age of 15. Mr Justice Gall said Wong was a mature adult and his deprived childhood could not help him much when it came to sentencing.
