By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-11 11:06:30 | Updated at 2025-03-12 03:47:29
16 hours ago
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$1,802) from a bank with a toy gun after overstaying in Hong Kong for over 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 on the previous day.
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 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.
Investigators had closed the case as an unresolved crime and disposed of the paper left behind by the culprit after failing to lift any fingerprints.
