A grandmother who tipped off the cops about her twin infant grandchildren being “abandoned” at home by their mom was arrested yesterday after she admitted to fabricating the story in a bid to get her video game-obsessed son arrested.
In the latest twist to the family drama, the 50-year-old vegetable stall vendor surnamed Shum was questioned by police yesterday at around 5pm when she was visiting the 5-month-old twin grandchildren at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital.
She was taken to the police station to cancel her report, and was held overnight on suspicion of filing a false police report.
“I didn’t think it would be so serious, I thought it would be just like the mainland; call the police, arrest my son, and hopefully he will behave and get back to work,” she told Apple Daily. “I didn’t think they would arrest my daughter-in-law instead, I feel so terrible about it.”
Shum’s 21-year-old son is still nowhere to be seen, but the newspaper reported that he sent a message to his mother letting her know that he can’t visit the hospital because of the media attention.
The saga began on Tuesday morning, when Shum called the police claiming that her 17-year-old daughter-in-law, surnamed Yang, had left the twins unattended for at least an hour to go into the mainland to find her 21-year-old husband.
Yang was arrested that day but later released on bail, and the morning after she told reporters that Shum lied about there being no one at their family home in the village of Tung Chan Wai, near the mainland border.
Shum later admitted that she was already in the house before Yang left, and that she called the police hoping that her son — a largely absentee father who doesn’t work and goes video-gaming in Shenzhen every week — would be arrested and be taught a lesson.
Filing a false police report and wasting police time carries a maximum fine of HK$2,000 (US$254) and up to six months in jail. Speaking to Apple Daily, Shum admitted that she was not afraid of going to jail.
“If I have to go to jail, that means I can take a break, I don’t have to go to work every day.”
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