Hong Kong man gets four months in jail over Lennon Wall attack during protests last year
- Defence lawyers plead for leniency as Hui Ching-ngai, father of an eight-year-old girl, had suffered a loss of income since the unrest erupted
- But acting principal magistrate Ivy Chui found the offence serious, noting the defendant had three violence-related criminal records
Kwun Tong Court heard that around 10pm on August 26, Hui Ching-ngai engaged in a heated argument with Ho Chin-leng, who saw Hui tearing down posters from a Lennon Wall inside a pedestrian tunnel in Tseung Kwan O.
Hui, 39, who was drunk, picked up a broom and an umbrella from the ground and attacked 42-year-old Ho, leaving him with bruises on his left shoulder and right cheek, and swelling on the forehead.
On Thursday, Hui pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm before acting principal magistrate Ivy Chui Yee-mei.
Defence lawyers pleaded for leniency on the grounds that Hui, the father of an eight-year-old girl, had suffered a loss of income since the protests erupted last year, before adding that the assault was not premeditated.
But Chui found the offence serious, pointing out that Hui had applied so much force in the attack that he had broken both the makeshift weapons.
Chui added the defendant had three criminal records from violence-related offences between 1997 and 2014, but had avoided jail in those cases.
“This is his fourth offence [relating to violence]. Immediate imprisonment is inevitable,” Chui said.
The knifeman, 50-year-old tour guide Tony Hung Chun, was jailed by the District Court for 45 months, but won sympathy from judge Kwok Wai-kin, who said the defendant was himself “an involuntary sacrifice and a bloodstained victim hanging by his last breath” as protesters had “ruthlessly trampled on his right to work, live and survive”.
Kwok was subsequently barred from handling cases relating to the social unrest by District Court top judge Justin Ko King-sau on reasons that his remarks had “led to controversial discussions in the community”.
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