A banker’s wife has been handed 120 hours of community service on appeal after previously admitting she hit an MTR employee with her luggage when she did not get her own way.
Lu Ying, 44, initially faced two weeks in the slammer on an assault charge, but was granted bail pending appeal. And the grumpy traveller then saw the High Court reduce her sentence to 120 hours of community service on Friday, but only after Deputy Judge Douglas Yau Tak-hong made her stand in the dock, hold the bars and “remember this feeling” before committing another offence over such a “trivial matter”.
Lu gave the 59-year-old MTR employee in question quite the fright on Halloween last year after he tried to prevent her squeezing a bag measuring 70cm x 40cm x 30cm through a gate at Sheung Shui station near the Chinese border. Miffed at being told what to do, she took the law into her own hands and hit the man with her luggage, causing him to fall and injure his leg.
Lu, who said she was in a rush to cross the border to Shenzhen to visit her mother on the day of the incident, pleaded guilty to one count of assault causing actually bodily harm at Fanling Court in Feb. 18 this year.
Yau noted at the time that MTR workers had enough stress to contend with on a daily basis without having to fear for their safety. But after being handed a two-week prison term, Lu was granted bail for HKD5,000.
Upon reducing the sentence, the magistrate said, “I do not think you are a wicked person but only a person who does not know how to handle your temper. But you are 44 years old and should learn to control yourself.” He then told her she could not “act like a six-year-old” when things didn’t go her way.
Let’s hope she heeds his advice and doesn’t repeat such bratty behaviour.
Photo: Lung Wa Felix Ho
Reader Interactions