An artist could have been forgiven for thinking he was the victim of a harsh critic when he found his paintings had been put out with the rubbish yesterday.
Police received a distress call at about 2 pm from friends of the 29-year-old artist from Trinidad and Tobago, claiming his US$1 million (HK$7.7 million) collection of paintings had been stolen.
But within minutes of arriving, officers found the canvas oil paintings dumped with junk in the stairwell of the Wan Chai building where he was staying with friends.
Detective Senior Inspector Mike Mason of the Wan Chai crime division said the artist had wrapped his works in protective paper.
He had then left them in the corridor outside the 12th-floor Johnston Road flat while packing and preparing to fly back to the West Indies.
'We believe someone like the garbage collector may have misunderstandingly put them in the stairwell,' Mr Mason said.