Shot with malice

After 37 days of evidence and careful jury consideration, yesterday's coroner's inquest verdict has laid to rest much of the speculation about the killing by Tsui Po-ko of two policemen and a security guard. But although much of the gossip and intrigue generated by the inquiry will dissipate now that the jury has made its decisions, questions remain about the controversy surrounding the case and the barrage of speculation that resulted in Tsui being demonised from the outset. Since the start of the inquiry into how Tsui and patrolling officer Tsang Kwok-hang were killed during a gunfight in the Tsim Sha Tsui underpass last year, Tsui was viewed as the killer, with one police spokesman branding him a 'rogue cop' before the inquest started. At one stage, Tsui's wife, Li Po-ling, complained that the allegations of criminality made against her husband at the inquest warranted her being excused from giving evidence - a privilege available to a defendant's spouse in a criminal trial. 'The inquest has developed into a quasi-criminal proceeding already. Such privilege should then be applied,' she argued via her lawyer, Daniel Wong Kwok-tung. But her request was turned down by coroner Michael Chan Pik-kiu, who said: 'An inquest is not a criminal proceeding and neither [is] a suspected person an accused.' In an effort to counter the overwhelming suspicion against Tsui, the dead man's mother, Cheung Wai-mei, engaged barrister Arthur Yip Chi-ho to represent him at the hearing. Early last month, Mr Yip applied for the inquest to be split, arguing that much of the evidence had 'led the jury to identify the killer like a criminal investigation and they are irrelevant to the inquiry into Tsui's death'. In the midst of the hearing, Mr Yip argued that evidence about Tsui's gambling habits, his visits to prostitutes and analysis by psychologists and criminologists was irrelevant. But the coroner dismissed his objections. Coroner's officer Arthur Luk Yee-shun SC said the substantial links between the three shooting cases justified the joint inquiry and that all material and evidence presented to the court had to be scrutinised. 'When these shooting incidents took place in our community, the public asked how they happened,' Mr Luk said. 'The public would also like very much to know why they happened.' The dramatic shoot-out involving the three policemen took place on March 17 last year, at about 1.15am in a Tsim Sha Tsui underpass. Police investigators said from the outset that the two patrolling constables were ambushed and shot by Tsui, with the off-duty constable from Tung Chung police station using a stolen police revolver. Shoot-out survivor Constable Wilson Sin Ka-keung and his patrol partner Tsang were severely wounded and attended to by police officers and emergency medical personnel in the Austin Road underpass soon after they radioed for emergency help. Although Tsui was apparently breathless and no pulse was detected, a sergeant on the scene had handcuffed him. The court heard that Tsui died after five bullets were fired into his torso, and that Tsang was killed by one fatal shot to his head. Constable Sin sustained two shots, to his head and leg, but survived. In his testimony, he said he did not see the attacker fire. Nor did he see how Tsang was wounded. A rusted .38 revolver bearing the serial number RHKP 7215 was found under Tsui's body, prompting police investigators immediately to link Tsui to two other murder cases in 2001, involving Constable Leung Shing-yan and bank guard Zafar Iqbal Khan. Leung was shot five times - once fatally in the head - at about 12.25pm on March 14, 2001, while investigating a bogus noise complaint in Shek To House, on Shek Wai Kok Estate. Leung's service revolver - RHKP 7215 - and 12 bullets were taken after the shooting. Striation grooves showed that he was killed with the same type of police .38 revolver. Some nine months later, Khan was killed in a robbery with the same gun. He was fired on three times and shot at close range in the head by a lone masked robber who stole more than HK$500,000 from a Hang Seng Bank branch in Tsuen Wan. The robbery happened shortly after midday on December 5, 2001. Despite exhaustive police efforts to find the killer of Leung and Khan, the cases remained unsolved for five years, even though the suspect was thought to be a policeman. But a fresh link to the crime was discovered in March last year after the shootings in the Tsim Sha Tsui underpass. 'It was very sad to have our case closed in this way,' said Organised Crime and Triad Bureau superintendent Eddie Ma Chi-kin in this month. 'I am rather upset. It was the most undesirable outcome after all these years of investigation.' Extensive investigations into Tsui's dealings were carried out after the shoot-out. His Tung Chung home was raided and his family and colleagues were interviewed. Experts were invited to give their opinions. The farther the investigation progressed, the more police investigators believed that Tsui was the suspect they had been seeking for years. Firearms experts did not prove that the killings were carried out with the same revolver because the gun used in last year's shooting had rusted and the comparison of striation marks was inconclusive. But police still believed that the number of bullets fired in the three cases suggested revolver RHKP 7215 was the only weapon involved. The inquest also found that Tsui owned a red polo shirt given him at a motorcycle festival in Ningxia on the mainland in 2000, which resembled one worn by the bank robber in 2001. Home video footage showed Tsui wearing the shirt. Among the 27 boxes of videos taken by police from Tsui's home, he was also seen wearing a pair of Mizuno sneakers similar to the robber's. Investigators failed to find the shoes in Tsui's home. One of the most crucial clues left by Tsui after his death was his DNA. According to evidence presented at the inquiry, Tsui was the possible source of DNA left on a surgical mask found in Shek To House, next to Leung's dead body. The probability was estimated to be that 'one man out of 1,490,000,000 could give a match to the DNA [on the mask]'. Yet the family's barrister argued that this was insufficient to prove that Tsui was the murderer of the other three. Mr Yip said the DNA evidence merely suggested that Tsui had been present at the death scene on March 14, 2001, before he reported for duty at Lantau Island North police station later that afternoon. He also said the evidence the police were using to allege that Tsui was the robber was indirect and circumstantial. 'The inquest jury can't return a verdict of unlawful killing unless the cases were proved beyond reasonable doubt,' he said. Assistant Police Commissioner John Lee Ka-chiu said before the inquest that police believed Leung, Khan and Tsang were all killed with the gun stolen from Leung. He also said that if Tsui were alive, the police would have enough evidence to charge him in relation to the robbery, the Tsim Sha Tsui shoot-out and the killing of Leung. If Tsui was the killer, he has left his mark as what crime experts have called an 'unusual serial killer'. He will be remembered by some as a policeman who killed a fellow officer for a service revolver while robbing a bank, and who then used the same weapon to kill another policeman in a gunfight five years later. The inquest into the deaths of the three policemen and the security guard began on February 26 and is believed to have been one of the longest in Hong Kong history. The inquest heard testimony from 116 witnesses and was shown 258 exhibits.