‘The Hong Kong guys will kill you’: Elizabeth Zhong told New Zealand police of gang violence threats before murder, court hears
- Zhong, a Chinese woman who was stabbed more than 20 times in November 2020, alerted police to threats made on her life in the months before her murder
- ‘It’s not me. It’s the Hong Kong guys. They will be always after you,’ her estranged business partner allegedly said. ‘Court won’t kill you, but they will.’
The affidavit, which Zhong filed in January 2020 as she and business partner Fang Sun were engaged in a heated civil battle over control of their multimillion dollar company, was read aloud alongside multiple other threat reports on Tuesday at Sun’s murder trial in the High Court at Auckland.
Zhong’s body was discovered by police on November 28, 2020 in the boot of her black, blood-smeared Land Rover, which had been left parked on a residential street in Sunnyhills, an east Auckland neighbourhood.
Sun, 48, is accused of attacking Zhong in the bedroom of her home on the night of November 27, 2020.
Among the statements read out on Tuesday was a subsequent March 2020 affidavit at the North Shore Police Centre in which jurors heard, in Zhong’s own words, the unease she said the threats had caused.
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“During these discussions [to resolve the civil case], Fang has become angry and furious at me,” she told police. “His face turns red and he starts waving his arms. He has made verbal threats and tried to intimidate me.”
She described a November 2019 meeting at a cafe in which the two tried but failed to resolve their differences.
“As no agreement could be made, Fang got excited and stated, ‘You’ll be in trouble’,” she said. “I replied, ‘I don’t care.’”
She recalled Sun replying: “It’s not me. It’s the Hong Kong guys. They will be always after you.”
I feel very stressed and scared. The threats make me very scared
When Zhong replied she would wait for the civil court decision to resolve the matter, Sun allegedly said: “[The] court won’t kill you, but they will.”
“I am already more than 50 years old, so I don’t mind,” Zhong recalled saying in response.
Sun, she said, responded: “No, no, no. It’s not only you. It involves your whole family.”
Zhong also described in the police affidavit receiving more than 10 phone calls at a time from the defendant, which she described as harassment.
“Now my whole family have started to have their lives interrupted by some private investigators engaged by Fang,” she said. “I feel very stressed and scared. The threats make me very scared.”
