Acid-throwing cases usually involve love triangles or contract revenge attacks but when Lo Ching-ho, 24, dropped a bottle of drain cleaner on six people in a busy Causeway Bay street he created a whole new category for the offence.
'There has never been any case like this, where the defendant threw acid with no particular victim in mind, but just any victim who might be there,' Mrs Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling said, convicting Lo of throwing corrosive fluid with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. 'This is a new category.'
Lo's barrister, Oliver Davies, agreed, saying there had been 'absolutely nothing like this' before.
A jury unanimously convicted Lo on the charge, which he denied, in the Court of First Instance. He pleaded guilty to a lesser alternative charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Sentencing was adjourned to December 15 pending a psychological report on him and medical and psychological reports on two victims who were seriously injured in Lockhart Road on December 12 last year.
The judge said that previous instances of the charge involved either love triangles or cases where a person attacked a stranger for money for someone who wanted revenge.