An elderly Hong Kong man, known on the internet as “Mr Ho” after a whirlwind romance with a much younger mainland Chinese woman, has received a suspended jail sentence for an insecticide attack on a passer-by who taunted him about controversies arising from his marriage.
Tuen Mun Court on Tuesday suspended Ho Huen’s two-month jail sentence for two years after rejecting the defence’s suggestion to settle the case by imposing a fine.
The court also ordered the 77-year-old retiree to pay the complainant HK$2,000 (US$257) in compensation for the injuries he inflicted during the incident at Siu Hong railway station on May 25.
Ho pleaded guilty last month to assault occasioning actual bodily harm for spraying insecticide on a 41-year-old woman during the altercation, which also involved Ho’s now-estranged wife and the pedestrian’s 15-year-old son.
The woman raised the couple’s ire after calling them “rats scurrying across the street”, a Chinese idiom used to describe someone who is loathed by everyone.
The defendant retrieved a canister of bug spray from his wife’s bag and sprayed the complainant with the poisonous substance, causing rashes and redness to develop on her right forearm.
