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SCMP Reporter

TWO electricians who killed a man after he accidentally stood on one's foot in a food queue were each sentenced to three years' jail for manslaughter yesterday.

   Sentencing Kok Lon-ven, 25, and Wu Ming-tak, 32, Mr Justice Leong pointed out that the incident had arisen from an extremely trivial dispute, which had the unfortunate consequence of death.

   He accepted that no weapon was used but said it was a case of two men acting together to attack a third.

  He agreed that neither Kok nor Wu were prone to violence and that what they had done was totally out of character, adding that he would view the matter as an isolated incident.

 Kok and Wu had denied the manslaughter of Gan Wai-kay, 30, but both were convicted after trial by a High Court jury.

   During the trial, prosecutor Alan Lucas called evidence that the three men had been queueing to buy lunch at the Cafe de Coral in Broadway, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, on March 9 last year.

   When Gan had stepped back, he accidentally stood on the foot of one of the two defendants, leading to a fight during which he was kicked and punched.

   After the fight broke off, Gan had collapsed and later was certified dead.

   Counsel for the two men, Ronald Tang, in mitigation said his clients had been described by their character witnesses as men of mild temper and there was nothing to indicate that either of them was in any way prone to violence.

 It was only a fist fight and no weapon was used; but for the subsequent death, they would have been charged only with fighting in a public place, said Mr Tang.

   Both Kok and Wu had surrendered to the police when they learned that they were wanted after Gan's death.

   The electrical and air-conditioning business they had managed to set up after years of hard work was shattered and their families had suffered a great deal of stress and strain, he said.

     The two men had learned a bitter lesson, said counsel, asking for a lenient sentence.



Two jailed for food-queue killing