Hong Kong policeman shoots three times at driver trying to run him over in Tuen Mun
- The 24-year-old was hit in the arm and arrested
- Superintendent says officer had ‘no other choice’ but to shoot
A policeman shot three times at a man who was trying to run him over on Sunday morning, after an operation in northern Hong Kong turned violent.
Marco Philippe Cuzet, a French-Chinese Hong Kong ID card holder, was hit in the arm, arrested and sent to hospital.
According to police, at about 2.30am on Sunday officers saw a suspicious vehicle driving along Tuen Mun Road. They chased it to a car park at Yau Oi Estate, a public estate in Tuen Mun.
After checking out the scene, armed officers stood guard at the car park’s exit, waiting for the vehicle to come out. A minute later, the car emerged and stopped at the car park gate.
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“Our officer tried to approach the vehicle, but he slipped and fell,” Superintendent Chan Yi-ping, of Crime Operations New Territories North, told reporters.
“At that point, the driver accelerated and drove towards our officer. At that moment, his life was threatened. So he fired three shots at the driver.”
The officer gave verbal warnings to the driver before shooting, she said.
The suspect, 24, was hit in the left arm.
Chan said the driver tried to speed off, damaging the car park gate, but was stopped by other officers on a street nearby.
She stressed that the officer fired the shots because his life was seriously threatened and there was very little room for him to escape from the car.
“With no other choice, he had to shoot,” she said.
The man was sent to Tuen Mun Hospital for treatment. A police officer was sent to the same hospital with hand injuries.
Cuzet was arrested for dangerous driving, driving without a licence, driving without third-party insurance, criminal damage and taking conveyance without authority.
A police source said he had been wanted for jumping bail during a court case concerning drug possession. He was also involved in two drug trafficking cases, the source said, adding that he claimed to be a salesman and lived on Lei Muk Shue Estate in Kwai Chung.
The officer who fired the rounds was a station sergeant surnamed Ng, who had been on the force for 30 years, according to the source.
A resident in the neighbourhood, surnamed Tse, told TVB he heard police shouting “Police! Don’t move!” followed by three gun shots at about 3am, while he was at home. “When I went to the balcony to check, I saw a black car driving very fast, crashing into a gate,” Tse said.
Hong Kong Police disclosed its guidance on opening fire in a Facebook post on March 17 this year, a day after a knife-wielding man in Yau Ma Tei was shot dead by police after attacking a supermarket manager he had argued with. The guidelines stated officers could fire to protect people, including police officers, from the threat of death or serious injury.
