Retired man dies after fall from Whampoa building while cleaning windows

Lily Mansions at Whampoa Garden in Hong Kong’s Hung Hom district. Photo: HungBEER/Wiki Commons
Lily Mansions at Whampoa Garden in Hong Kong’s Hung Hom district. Photo: HungBEER/Wiki Commons

A 67-year-old man died yesterday after plunging from his 11th-story Hung Hom apartment while trying to clean his windows, at least the seventh such death in the past four years.

Responding police arrived at the scene at about 1pm after receiving reports of a man lying on a flower bed at Whampoa Garden, Oriental Daily reports. The man, later identified by police as Kwok Chun-tung, was subsequently taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A white towel was found on the ground next to the man, a resident of the complex’s Lily Mansions building, while police said some of the window grilles in his flat had been removed and put aside.

According to Apple Daily, the retired man lived with his wife and two children in the unit. He was home alone when the incident occurred.

Kwok’s wife only learned of the tragedy when she returned home to find police in the middle of their investigation. She broke down in tears upon learning the news from officers.

Including Kwok, seven lives have been claimed in window-cleaning fall cases in the past four years. The latest case happened in May, when a Filipino woman fell to her death while cleaning the windows of her seventh-floor flat in Mong Kok.

In January, the government moved to ban all domestic helpers from cleaning external windows above the ground floor unless the window is fitted with a secure grille. That move followed the deaths of an Indonesian domestic helper, 21, and a 35-year-old Filipino helper in two separate window-cleaning accidents in last January and August, respectively.



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