Officer dead in shoot-out would have faced charges for 2001 killings

If Constable Tsui Po-ko were alive, police believe they would have enough evidence to prosecute him for last Friday's shoot-out in Tsim Sha Tsui, the killing five years ago of a policeman whose gun was stolen, and a 2001 bank robbery in which a security guard died.

Assistant Police Commissioner John Lee Ka-chiu, head of the force's crime section, said yesterday that the evidence had been gathered in an intense investigation since the gun battle, in which Tsui, 35, and Constable Tsang Kwok-hang, 33, were killed and Constable Sin Ka-keung, 28, was shot in the leg and face, suffering a shattered cheekbone.

'If the suspect was still alive, we would have enough evidence to charge him in relation to the Hang Seng Bank robbery, the Tsim Sha Tsui shoot-out and the killing of [Constable] Leung Shing-yan,' Mr Lee said at a meeting in Macau of criminal investigation chiefs from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.

On March 14, 2001, Leung, 23, was shot dead and his revolver stolen after he answered a bogus noise complaint at a flat in Shek Wai Kok Estate, Tsuen Wan, making him the first policeman killed on duty in Hong Kong since 1994. Police believe that the same firearm was used on December 5, 2001, when security guard Zafar Iqbal Khan, 31, was shot during a robbery at a Hang Seng Bank branch on Castle Peak Road in which $500,000 was stolen.

Mr Lee said investigators were also now more certain about the motives behind Tsui's alleged attack on the two patrolling officers in an underpass at the junction of Austin and Canton roads last Friday. 'It was a premeditated attack aimed at [obtaining] the two on-duty constables' guns and bullets,' he said.

Police Commissioner Dick Lee Ming-kwai said Constable Sin was gradually recovering and had spoken to officers from the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau. 'He has provided us with some very useful information,' Dick Lee said.