Police take suspect back to scene of alleged assault in shopping row
Print Edition
A Hong Kong man arrested in connection with the death of a visitor from the Chinese mainland over a shopping dispute was taken to the scene yesterday to stage a reconstruction.
Tour guide Wu Yin-nam was driven to Man Lok Street in Kowloon, news website stheadline reported, and taken to the D2 Jewelry Store, where the incident said to have led to the death of Miao Chunqi was alleged to have taken place.
He was then led to the entrance of an adjacent car park. Two police officials carried a man-sized dummy representing Miao, and ordered Wu to reenact an alleged attack on Miao. He kneed the dummy several times, the website reported.
The reconstruction lasted about 45 minutes before Wu was driven back to Kowloon police station, it said.
According to media reports, Miao, 54, was trying to mediate when a traveling companion, Zhang Lixia, 53, was involved in a confrontation with tour group leader Deng Haiyan, 32. Some men appeared, dragging him outside and beating him, the website claimed.
Miao’s wife told the Modern Evening Times: “My husband was healthy and didn’t have illness. It was impossible for him to die of sudden disease.”
According to South China Morning Post, Miao and Zhang were among a group of 19 mainland tourists who had arrived from Shenzhen on Sunday.
On Monday, the group was taken to the jewelry store after visiting a temple. Zhang didn’t make a purchase, and that triggered an argument with Deng, the newspaper reported.
Called to the scene, Hong Kong police said they found Miao unconscious. He died in Queen Elizabeth Hospital the following morning. A post-mortem examination will be held to ascertain the cause of death.
Police arrested two women for fighting in a public place and took two men into custody.
A member of the tour group, surnamed Wang, told local news website on.cc that she and her fellow tourists were kept in the store for four hours and told that if they didn’t buy anything their travel tickets would be torn up and they would be beaten.
In its report, China Central Television quoted an employee at the store, run by Diamond In Love Group, as saying: “We aren’t clear what happened.”
In an interview with CCTV, Tung Yiu-chung, executive director of the Hong Kong Travel Industry Council, said the store had been the subject of several complaints.
In September last year, more than 10 elderly people from Fuzhou, capital of southeast China’s Fujian Province, had their ID cards seized and were locked in the store, according to the China Youth Daily newspaper. They were forced to pay at least 10,000 yuan (US$1,575) each and were only freed when authorities were alerted, it said.
One Hong Kong resident told the paper: “Hong Kong people will never go to that store. It is there to rip off mainland tourists. We all know that.”
Tung told CCTV that if there was evidence of violations, the store would be banned from accepting mainland tour groups.
Lam Chi-ting, general secretary of the Federation of Hong Kong Trade Unions in Tourism, told Shanghai-based financial website jiemian that Miao’s three-day tour to Hong Kong and Macau cost around 300 yuan, way below the actual cost. Stores paid for the tour in cooperation with the travel agency so tourists were forced to make purchases, he said.
There has been no response from the Hong Kong Tianma International Travel Agency, which arranged the tour.
Tung told CCTV that documents had been handed to the China Tourism Administration and if violations were found, the agency would be closed.
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