A man who threw drain cleaner onto passersby in a Causeway Bay street in December last year was jailed by a judge for 13 years yesterday.
Mrs Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling said the crime - spraying an acid indiscriminately upon people with whom he bore no grudge - was more serious than previous categories of the offence.
A jury had earlier convicted Lo Ching-ho, 24, in the Court of First Instance of throwing corrosive fluid with intent to do grievous bodily harm. Lo had pleaded not guilty to the charge, and offered to plead guilty to a lesser one of inflicting grievous bodily harm, which the prosecution did not accept.
Lo threw a bottle of drain cleaner onto Lockhart Road behind the Sogo department store on December 12 last year. A couple were seriously injured and two other pedestrians suffered minor injuries. Barnes said yesterday that in the past, cases involving the offence of which Lo had been convicted fell into two categories: love triangles and cold-blooded attacks on a stranger for reward. The court took a starting point of 10 to 15 years when considering sentencing someone convicted in the first situation, and 10 to 18 years in the second.
Lo's case created a new category of the offence. Unlike other cases, he had no underlying grudge against the victims, no greed for money to act as a hired hand, and no particular target apart from the public that happened to be there, the judge said.
'In my view, the culpability is more serious than the two categories,' she said. 'While grudges or greed are never an excuse, they act as underlying motives for the serious crime. There was no reason for the commission of the present offence, just his unhappiness.'
