A local man in his thirties jumped to his death from the Friendship Bridge on Saturday, and Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man said yesterday that the victim committed suicide after stealing HK$4.9 million (5.05 million patacas) from his boss and gambling it all away at a casino in Zape on Friday.
A PJ statement on Sunday noted that the victim’s body was retrieved by Macau Customs Service (SA) officers and brought ashore at the Macau Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal in Zape after the corpse had been found in coastal waters off Macau Tower in Nam Van earlier that day, adding that the victim, wearing only a pair of grey underpants and without any identification documents, was later identified as the man who had jumped off Ponte da Amizade (Friendship Bridge) on Saturday.
Chan during a regular press conference yesterday disclosed details about the victim’s involvement in an aggravated theft case: “At noon on August 10 [Saturday], the Judiciary Police received a report from the proprietor of a luxury goods shop in the city centre that one of his employees had stolen HK$4.9 million from him. According to our investigation, we found that the employee opened the shop’s safe when no one was in the shop at around 7 p.m. on August 9 [Friday] and stole HK$4.9 million in cash. Subsequently, the employee took the cash to a casino in Zape to gamble and ended up losing all of the money on the same night before returning to his home in Fai Chi Kei district. At 9 a.m. on August 10, the employee set off on his motorcycle from his home, driving around the city until 10 a.m. when the Judiciary Police were notified that a man had fallen into the coastal waters from the highest point of Friendship Bridge.”
The employee was identified by the Judiciary Police as a local man surnamed Chan who had worked for the shop as a salesman for four years. His body was found by the Macau Customs Service floating off Macau Tower on Sunday afternoon.
The PJ investigation also showed, according to Chan, that the victim took HK$ 2.5 million from the shop’s safe at the request of his employer on Friday when he took the opportunity to steal the remaining HK$4.9 million from the safe.
Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Chan Wun Man looks on during yesterday’s regular press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape. – Photo: Yuki Lei
