Mentally ill policeman acquitted for throwing things from high-rise

A court police officer with schizophrenia was acquitted at Kowloon City Court yesterday for throwing 13 objects into the street from his apartment on the 34th floor.

Fung Chiu-wa, 35, had pleaded not guilty to seven counts of dropping objects from a building.

Between June 25 and August 23 last year he threw a phone, a bucket, a television remote control, a glass plate and his phone bill out of the window of his home at Bauhinia Garden, Tseung Kwan O. The objects either landed in the garden between two apartment blocks or on top of the safety net above the swimming pool. No one was injured.

Fung had told the police when arrested that an invisible person was controlling him. He was distressed and could not think properly.

Fung was working at Kwun Tong Court at the time of the offences.

Magistrate Peter Law Tak-chuen said there was no doubt that Fung had thrown the objects. But Law accepted a submission by Fung's lawyer, Manyi Tsang, that his illness was affecting him.