Two-time hero among 40 hailed for acts beyond the call of duty

A man who leapt to help a policewoman subdue an assailant in a Mong Kok street received his second Good Citizen Award yesterday.

Paul Chan Kwok-on was among 40 people recognised for public-spirited actions.

Other recipients included a 74-year-old man who struggled with a taxi driver who attacked a teenage girl and a woman who reported her boss for transferring more than HK$300 million of clients' money into his own account.

Mr Chan, a St John's Ambulance member, was walking down the street eating a fish ball and talking on his phone about midnight on October 25 last year when he saw two men beating another.

A patrolling policeman and policewoman stepped in but the woman had trouble subduing one of the men, so Mr Chan threw away his fish ball and helped her wrestle the man to the ground and handcuff him.

'I did not think of my own safety at that moment. I just did what a citizen should do,' said Mr Chan, 45, a hygiene consultant and part-time tutor for a security company. He received his first award aged 16 in 1978 when he reported a rape suspect.