A Jockey Club vehicle was thought to be the mainland group's first target
A gang of illegal mainland immigrants arrested on Monday in an air, land and sea operation had been planning to hold up a Jockey Club van carrying the weekend takings, police said yesterday.
Three of the gang were captured in a flat in Lei Yue Mun, where officers seized a 7.62mm-calibre pistol, six rounds of ammunition, an air pistol, an axe, two hammers and four machetes. Two others managed to flee, running up into Tseung Kwan O Chinese Permanent Cemetery.
Chief Superintendent Fung Kin-man, head of the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau, said it was a 'well-planned and violent' robbery gang headed by a Hong Kong person who reportedly recruited mainland robbers and planned hold-ups.
'We suspect they were going to hold up an armoured van with the weekend takings of Jockey Club before the arrests. We have successfully smashed an armed robbery gang and at the same time foiled a hold-up,' he said.
'Our investigation showed that the robbery gang might have been involved in previous cash-in-transit robberies.'
Since 2001, there have been 11 such robberies. Securicor guard Chan Wai-leung, 42, was stabbed to death by a gang of robbers who fled with a cash box containing $800,000 takings from a Jockey Club betting centre in Kwai Chung in March last year.
