Hong Kong man jailed for life for stabbing to death father whose family discussion he tried to interrupt
- Lee Wai-man, 50, killed Ting Yun-kwong at a Tai Po shopping centre three hours after meeting him for the first time
- The judge said Lee carried out a revenge attack that was ‘wholly out of proportion’ after he was told to keep out of a family conversation
An unemployed Hong Kong man, who drunkenly stabbed a stranger to death after failing to interrupt his conversation, was jailed for life on Tuesday.
Lee Wai-man, 50, was unanimously convicted by a High Court jury for murdering Ting Yun-kwong, 54, who had asked him not to butt in to his conversation about wedding plans with his son at a Tai Po shopping centre on December 8, 2016.
Defence counsel Alex Ng had tried to reduce the charge to manslaughter, to which Lee pleaded guilty, by arguing diminished responsibility. Ng claimed Lee had an irresistible craving to consume alcohol, which substantially impaired his mental responsibility for the crime.
But the jury of six women and one man sided with prosecutors after three hours of deliberation on Tuesday afternoon.
Madam Justice Susana D’Almada Remedios said it was a tragic case in which Lee planned and initiated a revenge attack “wholly out of proportion” on a man he had met just three hours earlier because of a “very slight confrontation”.