HKU professor arrested for murder after wife’s body found in suitcase in office

Cheung Kie-chung. Screengrab via Apple Daily video.
Cheung Kie-chung. Screengrab via Apple Daily video.

Just when you thought there would be only one story this month about a professor allegedly murdering his wife, we sadly get another.

An academic from the University Hong Kong was arrested yesterday on suspicion of killing his spouse after her body was found in a suitcase in his office at the school’s Pok Fu Lam campus.

Cheung Kie-chung, 53, had filed a missing persons report on August 20 claiming his 52-year-old wife Tina Chan left their home at Wei Lun Hall, a residential hall — of which is the warden — on campus where he lives with his family including son and daughter.

Speaking to reporters at HKU last night, superintendent Law Kwok-hoi of Hong Kong Island Regional Crime Headquarters said they grew suspicious of Cheung after examining the building’s CCTV footage.

They could not find footage of Chan leaving the building, but saw footage of Cheung moving a wooden box from the premises.

Officers raided Cheung’s office in the Haking Wong Building at the heart of campus, where they found the wooden box. Inside it, they found a suitcase seeping blood and emitting a foul odor.

Law told reporters that it held the body of a woman in her underwear. She also had an electric wire tied around her neck, which suggested she could have been strangled, he said, adding that the time or cause of death had yet to be determined.

Cheung was in the office at the time of the raid, and was arrested at the scene.

Responding to reporters’ questions, Law said that the couple had an argument in the early hours of August 17 over “mainly trivial matters.”

Law explained that a day earlier, Chan and the couple’s daughter had a dispute over her toilet hygiene, and in the early hours of the following morning, Chan then had an argument with Cheung blaming him for not supporting her during the earlier argument.

“Before his dispute with his wife, the wife had a dispute with the daughter because of the hygiene of the toilet, and the wife blamed her husband,” he said.

Law confirmed that officers have been in contact with the couple’s son and daughter.

Cheung is an associate professor at HKU’s department of mechanical engineering, and has been with that department for 16 years, i-cable reports.

According to Apple Daily, the couple’s daughter had put up missing persons posters on campus in the days after the missing persons report was filed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmvNEak_Be8

The newspaper also even spoke to a friend, biology research assistant professor Roger Wong Hoi-fung from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) who asked the reporter “are you sure you that’s the right person?”

He said: “I saw him on Friday, I didn’t go to his office, but I did meet him at the HKU campus for coffee. There didn’t seem to be any problems, he was 100 percent normal.”



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