Wife's suspended sentence upheld as partner jailed for assault with wounding
Tsunami survivor Leung Wai-kei yesterday escaped a prison term for fraudulently claiming social welfare, just hours before seeing her husband jailed over a pub brawl.
Leung, 28, had her suspended sentence upheld by a Tuen Mun magistrate in the morning, in the face of a review call by the prosecution, then raced to Kowloon City where Ko Chung-keung, 38, received a 33-month sentence in the afternoon.
Ko, who had pleaded not guilty, was convicted of having assaulted and wounded four men in a Tsim Sha Tsui bar.
The pair's woes are still not over because Ko was arrested last week in a raid on an alleged illegal gambling den.
In Tuen Mun Court, deputy magistrate Raymond Wong Kwok-fai rejected the prosecution's assertion that Leung's eight-month sentence, suspended for two years, was too lenient. He reiterated that the case was very different from average social welfare fraud cases. He said Leung had been an eligible dole recipient before and during the period of the offence and her only deception had been to claim she had lost contact with her husband, enabling her to get an extra $255 a month - a total of $2,475 - in single-parent allowance.
