When gangster Kwai Ping-hung’s arrest ended an era of shoot-outs on Hong Kong’s streets
- Notorious gangster Kwai Ping-hung was arrested while he slept on Christmas Eve in 2003
- After serving 16 years of a 24-year sentence, Kwai was released in January and deported to the US
“Hong Kong’s most-wanted suspect, Kwai Ping-hung, will spend Christmas behind bars after he was arrested by the elite police Flying Tiger squad as he slept early yesterday,” reported the South China Morning Post on December 25, 2003. “Officers made the biggest seizure of firearms for nearly 30 years during the raid in Yau Ma Tei. The find included seven grenades and more than 800 bullets,” the story continued.
Kwai and his gang were suspected of committing 20 armed robberies over three decades in which HK$40 million worth of “cash and jewels” were stolen, including one that culminated in the non-fatal shootings of two policemen in Mong Kok in 2001. Constable Sze Kwan-ming “was shot between the eyes but lived because the bullet passed downwards, exiting through his jaw and leaving his brain unharmed” while Constable Lai Chi-wai “was shot in the shoulder”, the Post reported.
That shoot-out caused Kwai, who moved to Hong Kong from mainland China in 1980, to become the city’s most-wanted man and the subject of a HK$2 million reward. His arrest ended “an era when larger-than-life criminals armed with AK-47s turned city streets into shooting galleries”, reported the Post years later.
Kwai pleaded not guilty to five charges: attempted murder, shooting with intent, possession of firearms without a licence, possessing ammunition without a licence, and possession of an explosive substance. He insisted that the police had arrested the wrong man, saying that his name was, in fact, Guan Derong, and that he was a US citizen, according to a Post article from January 22, 2005. During court proceedings it was revealed that Kwai had indeed married in the United States, in 1995, and emigrated there a year later. He divorced his wife in 2000.
On February 3, 2005, the Post reported that “Gangster Kwai Ping-hung was convicted of possessing arms, ammunition and an explosive substance after a 20-day trial,” for which he was sentenced to 17 years in jail. At a retrial for the remaining charges that May, Kwai was acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of resisting arrest and his sentence was increased to 24 years.