Elderly Singaporean man jailed for 11 years over Hong Kong robberies
75-year-old, who had overstayed in the city for more than a decade, snatched HK$14,000 from a bank in Yau Ma Tei using an airgun
An elderly Singaporean man has been jailed for 11 years for attempting to rob a retail chain with a bottle of water and snatching HK$14,000 (US$1,800) from a bank with an airgun after overstaying in Hong Kong for more than a decade and exhausting his savings.
The High Court on Tuesday sentenced Leong How-seng on a count of robbery and attempted robbery after the 75-year-old pleaded guilty a day earlier.
The court heard Leong, a married man in his native country, had remained jobless and lost contact with his wife since arriving in Hong Kong in 2007. He told court that he had overstayed in the city since then and exhausted his savings of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong dollars.
He said he was financially dependent on his girlfriend he met in the city, but the pair encountered financial difficulties after the anti-government protests in 2019 and the pandemic that followed.
On July 1, 2020, the septuagenarian approached a Prince Edward branch of pharmacy chain Mannings with a bottle of water and a paper that said: “If you want to live, hurry or you will be burned with petrol.”
He showed the written threat to a salesman, who was unfazed and ejected the defendant from the shop before calling police.