A 47-year-old laborer has been charged with talking a gang of teens — including her own 14-year-old son — into robbing a pair of women she believed had cheated her at the mahjong table.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, police inspector Clio Chan Yi-ting said they arrested Zhou Aixiu, her 14-year-old son Chow, and four other teenage boys after police reports were filed last week by two women saying they were in robbed in Sham Shui Po, according to Apple Daily.
Zhou Aixiu was this morning charged with two counts of conspiring in and instigating a robbery during her appearance at Eastern Magistrates’ Court, on.cc reports.
The five teens — aged 14 to 16 — were arrested on suspicion of robbery and attempted robbery, then released on bail, Apple Daily reported. They are required to report back to police in January.
Both victims claimed to have been followed by four to five people, then grabbed from behind and held around the necks while their mouths were covered.
According to Apple Daily, the genesis of the robberies stemmed to Zhou losing a large sum of money to two other women — a 56-year-old surnamed Luk, and a 55-year-old surnamed Ho — during a game at a mahjong parlor.
Convinced the two had cheated her, Zhou gave her 14-year-old son information about the two women, and asked him to rob them.
The son then gathered four friends, and allegedly targeted their first victim, Luk, on Fuk Wa Street in the early hours of Sunday, Dec. 16, and robbed her of HK$8,000 (US$1,000) and 500RMB (US$73).
The day after, the group targeted Ho on Pei Ho Street, but failed to rob her as she was able to shout for help, prompting her assailants to flee the scene.
During her application for bail in court, a defense lawyer said that Zhou settled in Hong Kong in 2003 from the mainland, that she is a responsible mother, and is the family’s main breadwinner, earning a daily salary of about HK$1,100 (US$140) as a laborer on a construction site.
The magistrate rejected the defendant’s application for bail, and the case was adjourned until Feb. 8, where it will be referred to West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court.
