A court has sentenced a barber to 160 hours of community service for snipping off a chunk of a woman’s ponytail as she took a nap during a bus ride because her long hair annoyed him.
Allen Yu Kam-lun, 65, had previously pleaded not guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily in July, but during a hearing on September 11, he decided to change his plea to guilty, Ming Pao reports.
Yu, who was representing himself, told the courtroom that he felt remorse for what he had done, that he acted on impulse, and that he hoped for a lenient sentence as he has been working as a barber for two years earning just HK$6,000 (US$765) a month working three days a week.
Yu told the court that he has been living with his mother since his divorce and promised not to reoffend.
Apple Daily reported that at his sentencing yesterday, magistrate Colin Wong Sze-chung said that although Yu had a history of crime in the past, he had shown remorse for his actions and noted that Yu was receiving psychiatric treatment.
Wong decided to hand Yu a community service order and also required that he submit regular urine samples to a probation office to prove he’s not using drugs. The judge also warned Yu that if he did reoffend, “it won’t be a community service order next time.”
The incident in question took place on the morning of January 13, when Yu was sitting on the top deck of a 107 bus travelling from Kowloon to Aberdeen.
He was sitting behind 25-year-old Ting Wai-lam, who had taken a nap on the bus and her ponytail. He told the court that Ting’s ponytail was “very long and very messy”, wasn’t tied properly, and was brushing against his knee.
He claimed to have told Ting several times that her hair was bothering him, but she ignored it. So Yu decided to take matters into his own hands.
Yu was confronted by a male passenger on the bus who saw Yu snip Ting’s hair about two to three times in five to six seconds, and Yu admitted that Ting’s hair was bothering him.
