Mother arrested after 5-year-old found wandering around Hong Kong housing estate at 3.30am looking for food
- Boy approached security guard at Po Tin Estate in Tuen Mun and said he was hungry
- Police later took 42-year-old woman into custody on suspicion of neglect
Police have arrested a mother for leaving her five-year-old son unattended in a public housing flat in northern Hong Kong in the early hours of Tuesday.
The young boy approached a security guard at 3.30am in the ground-floor lobby of a public housing block in Po Tin Estate off Ming Kum Road, Tuen Mun, and asked for food.
“He told the security guard that he felt hungry,” a police source said.
Officers later arrested a 42-year-old woman on suspicion of ill-treatment or neglect of a child.
As of 5.30pm, the suspect, a housewife, was still being held for questioning and had not been charged, according to police. A law enforcement source said investigations showed the mother left home and went to meet her friends in the Tuen Mun district in the early hours of Tuesday after her son fell asleep.
The source said at the time of the incident, the boy’s father was at work in mainland China.