Abducted boy too hard to handle, court told

A confessed kidnapper thought it would have been simple to restrain a child - but his 13-year-old victim proved too hard to handle, a jury heard yesterday.

Cheung Chi-keung, 38, said he let co-accused Wu Wai-fung, 46, take over guarding Wu Ho-him after the boy began struggling and shouting in an attempt to escape. Each denies murdering the boy.

Cheung said he punched Ho-him twice and hit him once with a hammer near his temple, but then left him to Wu. 'As to how Wu Wai-fung hit the boy I really could not see,' Cheung told the Court of First Instance. 'I only learned about it [from Wu] afterwards.'

His testimony contradicted what he told police after his arrest in July last year, when he claimed to have seen Wu attacking Ho-him but did not intervene. 'I was only trying to co-operate with the police,' Cheung said yesterday. 'I do not know why . . . I said I saw something which I did not. I was confused because before the kidnap I thought it would have been easy to restrain the boy.'

Cheung said he had taken the wheel of the seven-seater van the pair had used for the kidnap, while Wu and the boy were in the back with the curtains drawn. Wu told him a little later that the boy had died, Cheung said.

The pair are charged with murdering Ho-him, with prosecutors saying they took turns to hit him on the head with a hammer until it broke. The boy was probably dead within minutes of being abducted from near his school, Ho Lap College at San Po Kong, on the afternoon of April 21 last year, the court has heard.