A 44-year-old local man who killed a fellow male resident from Macau with a 21-centimetre-long pair of scissors in Zhuhai in the wee hours of Monday has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing charges of aggravated murder and possession of a prohibited weapon, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Leng Kam Lon said during a special press conference yesterday.
The suspect and the victim share the same hometown in the mainland.
Leng pointed out that the jobless suspect surnamed Wong and the 54-year-old local victim had met a few times in a residential flat in Zhuhai city’s Gongbei border town, but did not know each other well.
According to Leng, the Judiciary Police were notified by their counterparts in Zhuhai of the homicide at about 8:30 p.m. on Monday, pointing out that at about 3 a.m. on Monday at the flat, which another person has rented as a “gathering point for recreational activities” for people from the same hometown, the victim struck up a conversation with Wong and his wife, after which the victim and Wong, who both were drunk at that time, got into an argument and later got into a physical altercation in the flat.
After being stopped by others in the flat, Wong told the victim that they should continue their brawl outside, Leng said, adding that downstairs Wong snatched the pair of scissors with the about 8.5-centimetre-long blades from a nearby fruit stall and stabbed the victim repeatedly in the abdomen and thigh, causing the death of the victim.
A forensic examination carried out in the mainland, according to Leng, shows that the victim sustained multiple stab wounds, believing that the injury to the victim’s inner right thigh was the fatal wound, but the exact cause of death was still pending an official autopsy.
Upon identifying Wong as the suspect, Leng noted, PJ officers arrested him at about 8:40 p.m. on Monday when he was entering Macau from Hong Kong via the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal in Zape.
Under questioning, Wong admitted that he had stabbed the victim in the abdomen and thigh with the pair of scissors taken from a fruit stall, claiming that he had discarded the scissors and fled back to Macau from the mainland at 4:35 a.m. on Monday after stabbing the victim, and left for Hong Kong at 7 a.m. that day, said Leng, who added that the Judiciary Police believe that the quarrel between Wong and the deceased did not involve serious matters, “speculating” that the brawl was merely triggered by both being drunk.
According to the provisions of the Macau Penal Code, Leng said, although the murder took place outside the city, as both the suspect and the victim are local residents, Macau’s criminal law is applicable in this case.
Unlike in the mainland and Taiwan, there is neither capital punishment nor life or indefinite imprisonment allowed in Macau. The maximum prison sentence for aggravated murder is from 15 to 25 years in Macau, according to Article 129 of the Macau Penal Code.
The hooded local murder suspect is escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers yesterday from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a PJ vehicle en route to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP). – Photo: Yuki Lei
