A bungled burglary saw a Hong Kong family sharing tea and cigarettes with a man who broke into their apartment in Sham Shui Po yesterday morning.
The 22-year-old man had allegedly already broken into two flats on the sixth floor of the Yee Kuk Street residence, but hurt his back trying to escape by climbing down the scaffolding, reports SCMP.
He then broke through the window of a fifth floor flat, which was occupied by a 56-year-old site worker, his wife and their adult son.
Although police officers were waiting outside the door at around 5:30am, the site worker asked them not to enter for fear that the criminal – who was now holding a fruit knife to his own neck – would hurt his family.
Instead they let him drink SEVEN boxes of lemon tea, smoke their cigarettes and use their phone until he was finally persuaded to give himself up at about 6:15am.
Police recovered a wallet, a watch, a mobile and HKD1,500 in cash. Not a great haul for that amount of kerfuffle.
Photo: Ronaldo Quercia
