Immigration officials to receive for deportation Seattle parolee involved in mass murder

SEATTLE — Wai-Chiu “Tony” Ng is known for his delicately folded origami sculptures, sold to help fund a youth program in Seattle’s Chinatown International District — the same neighborhood where 30 years ago he was involved in the most heinous mass murder in the city’s history.

Ng, 56, has spent the past 28 of those years in prison for participating in the massacre at the Wah Mee Social Club. On Thursday, he was paroled.

However, he will not be a free man. Ng, who came to the United States in 1970, will be released from state prison directly into the custody of federal immigration officials, who will seek to deport him to Hong Kong, where he has family.

In deciding to release him from state prison, the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board (ISRB) wrote that Ng has been a “model inmate” and an “exemplary employee” at Correctional Industries, where he teaches drafting to other inmates. Psychologists have said he is “a low risk to reoffend” or for future violence.

King County prosecutors and victims’ families have fought Ng’s release. In a statement released Friday, Prosecutor Dan Satterberg cited the Wah Mee Massacre as the worst mass killing in Seattle history, and “it seems incomprehensible that one of the participants will soon be free.”

Ng and two other men, Kwai Fan “Willie” Mak and Benjamin Ng (no relation), entered the basement of the illegal gambling club in the early morning hours of Feb. 19, 1983, and hogtied, robbed and shot 14 patrons, killing all but one.