CRIMINAL CASE NO. 176 OF 2010
COURT: You are to be sentenced, Yau Ying-keung, for two grave knifepoint robberies in which, on successive days in December of last year, you targeted and attacked lone women and caused serious injuries, particularly to one of them.
Let me first describe something of you. You are a man of 38 years of age. You have not been convicted of any offences of violence prior to these two now before the court, though you have served two or three substantial terms of imprisonment for drug trafficking offences.
Dealing first with the circumstances of Count 1: on the evening of 30 December 2009, according to your account, you were short of money - you appear to have a drugs habit, and may have needed money to feed that habit - so you decided to commit a robbery to obtain that money. You prepared yourself by buying an 8-inch knife, not apparently the one depicted in the bundle of photographs, but one which must have been similar, and you made your way to the Lung Hang Estate in Tai Wai to look for a target, that is, somebody who was vulnerable to attack by being alone, and so could not protect herself or put up much resistance.
At about 9 pm you saw a lone female, aged 28, making her way home, and you decided that she would be your victim. You waited until she walked close to you, and then you pulled out the knife, grabbed her bag, and shouted that you were robbing her. She shouted out herself. There appears to have been something of a minor struggle, but it matters not for the purposes of sentencing you as to how that struggle was caused. You later said that she chased you and shouted loudly for help, and as a result of that, you injured her with the knife to the side of her head.
It is not suggested by the prosecution that you deliberately stabbed her to the head. However, the fact is that in the course of the robbery you inflicted a wound to the left forehead of this woman with the knife that you had produced for the purposes of the robbery. When she was examined later, she was found to have a 4-centimetre cut to her left scalp which required stitching. The injury is shown in the photographs in the first bundle. The wound can be seen quite clearly, and on any view, it was a nasty cut, even if it was not dangerous.
You fled with this woman’s bag, which contained a few personal items, but nothing of great value. This robbery is represented by Count 1.
I should add at this point that a recent statement has been taken from the victim in this case, dated 15 July 2010, in which she says that she has fully recovered after treatment and requires no further follow-up. She has a half-inch scar to her scalp, but it appears that it is under the hairline. She says that she is psychologically restored and in good mental condition, though she feels uneasy when she goes out at night, and remains afraid of being near to male strangers. Her daily life and social life were slightly affected, but she says that she is making herself forget the incident, and is re-emerging into her social life.
It is hardly necessary, in cases involving knifepoint robberies in which injuries are inflicted, for a court to need such statements from a victim to infer that the attack will have adverse psychological consequences. It is bound to have such consequences.
Now turning to Count 2: following your success, you clearly decided to do the same again, and according to your admissions to the police, you went out and purchased another knife, this one with a blade of about 10 inches, with a view to committing a robbery.
This time you went to the area of a football pitch near Sun Chui Estate in Sha Tin, again looking for a vulnerable victim. That is, a female on her own who would probably be carrying items worth stealing and who was unlikely to be able to make any effective resistance to your attack.
Shortly after 11 pm, a 30-year-old woman was walking adjacent to the football pitch when you suddenly appeared in front of her, wearing a face mask. You pointed a knife at her face and declared that you were robbing her. Not surprisingly, the woman was very scared, and screamed. Indeed, she must have been terrified. She fell onto the ground, and could see that you were holding the knife in your hand. You then punched her repeatedly to the head and face with your fists, three or four blows in all.
There is nothing in the facts of this case which suggests that she was offering any meaningful resistance to your attack, and this repeated punching has to be regarded as entirely gratuitous violence. That is to say violence which was over and above that which was necessary to gain control over this woman and steal her property. In the course of striking these blows, you had in your hand the knife which you had already used to threaten her. It is clear that it was that knife which caused the severe wound which this woman suffered to her face.
You told her to be quiet. She handed over her mobile phone and her handbag, which contained a wallet and some cash and the usual cards. You then fled the scene.
As I have said, your attack on this woman had left her with an extremely serious facial injury. She had a 13‑centimetre linear laceration across her jaw. It ran from the corner of her mouth on the left side down to her neck. The whole length of this wound along her mandible was cut through the skin, and at the deepest part, almost down to the bone. She had a laceration to her right thumb, likely to be a defensive injury, and other bruising and tenderness. 32 stitches were inserted into the wound on her face, and she was hospitalised for four days. The injury, as it appeared on 8 January 2010, is graphically depicted in the second bundle of photographs. The original medical report, which is dated 13 January 2010, describes the injury, and notes that the facial nerve remained intact and there were no clinical signs of bone fracture. At that time it was not possible to predict the severity of any residual scarring.
A further statement from this 30-year-old woman dated 29 June 2010 describes how a permanent scar of about 7 centimetres has been left on her left face. There are up‑to‑date photographs showing a bright red line along the area of the laceration. She understands that it may not be possible to remove that scar completely. She has received treatment from the Orthopaedics and Traumatology Department of the Prince of Wales Hospital, and she is to have further treatment in December of this year described as a laser resurfacing operation.
In addition, this woman has suffered some significant psychological impact. She has received some psychological treatment. To use her own words, “I am very scared when I go out in the evening. I always have a feeling that someone is following me. Currently I suffer from insomnia, and my work in the daytime is affected. I have lost my confidence in my appearance and have feelings of inferiority.”
She has had to apply for leave frequently from work for the treatment, and her income is affected. Her medical expenses amount to above $1,000 per month. This lady is to be married in September of this year, and the attack has affected arrangements for her marriage. As she puts it, “My mood of being a bride is also affected.” In addition, she has to attend to the wound frequently, and cannot allow it to be affected by the sun. She has received much assistance from members of the church of which she is a member. It is evident that her life has been significantly affected by the attack upon her.
You pleaded guilty to these two offences of robbery before a magistrate and have been committed here to the Court of First Instance for sentence. You admitted facts consistent with the outline that I have given. I am told that you made generally frank admissions when you were interviewed by the police in respect of these offences. I am also told on your behalf that you were driven to commit these offences by a need for money to feed your drugs habit, and that your remorse and contrition are genuine.
But on any view, these were vicious attacks by you, driven by your desire for money. You armed yourself in each case with a deadly weapon which you were willing to use. It is not simply a case of a weapon being taken to a robbery so that it could be displayed to the victim in order to gain control.
I accept that you did not set out in either of these cases with an intention to wound. However, the fact is that you showed yourself willing to use the knife in each case, not just to threaten, but to cause injury. The punching of the second victim in the face, knife in hand, shows a high degree of recklessness as to the consequences. It is almost equivalent to an intention to cause injury with that knife.
You do have mitigation available to you to which I shall refer in a moment, but, as I am sure you have been told, it is well established that where a dangerous weapon such as a knife is produced in the course of a robbery and displayed to the victim, the starting point for sentence will be at least 5 years’ imprisonment.
One of the grave dangers of the display of deadly weapons during the course of a robbery is that because such attacks may proceed in an unpredictable manner, there is always a high risk that the weapon will be used in some way, even if that is not the original intention of the robber. The actual use of such a weapon on the victims in the course of robbery amounts to a very serious aggravation of the offence.
I repeat that in your favour it can be said that you do not have a record of any sort of violence. Your record is related almost exclusively to drugs offences, though you have served more than one very substantial term of imprisonment for trafficking in dangerous drugs, so it is clear that prison does not provide a deterrent to you.
But the most important factor in your favour is your plea of guilty. You were identified by the first victim in a public place on 5 January 2010, and when you were arrested, you made immediate admissions. After you had been identified by the second victim on 15 January 2010, you made further admissions with regard to the second robbery, and then, as I say, you pleaded guilty when these matters were put to you in the committal court; and you have saved the need for the victims to relive their traumatising experiences in court, and this aspect of your case does provide you with positive mitigation which will reduce the substantial sentence of imprisonment which must inevitably be imposed.
Despite the fact that you have no record for offences of violence, your conduct in relation to these two vulnerable women, picked out by you because they were vulnerable, shows you to be an extremely dangerous man, and, as I have already remarked, one who is not deterred by substantial sentences of imprisonment. These are factors to which I am bound to have regard.
In sentencing you, I must determine the appropriate sentence of imprisonment for each offence as if you had been convicted by a jury after trial. I must then reduce that sentence to reflect the mitigation available to you, in particular your pleas of guilty, and I must then have regard to the overall totality of sentence, ensuring that the term that you must serve in custody is not too long overall for this course of criminal conduct, grave though it is. I shall seek to achieve that aim by overlapping the sentences.
In respect of the 1st charge, I consider that the appropriate starting point for sentence, bearing in mind that the knife was not only produced, but that it was used, is one of 7 years' imprisonment.
In respect of the 2nd charge, I have regard to the fact that the knife was produced and that you physically and gratuitously attacked this woman as she lay prone on the ground, punching her to her face and head whilst you held the knife, and that, as a consequence, she suffered this serious injury which is likely to leave a permanent visible mark to her face and permanent psychological harm.
In the circumstances, I regard the appropriate sentence of imprisonment before discount for mitigation to be one of 9 years’ imprisonment.
I have indicated that each of those sentences is to be reduced by one-third to reflect the pleas of guilty and the other mitigation available to you.
So for the 1st charge, the sentence I impose is one of 4 years and 8 months' imprisonment, and for the 2nd charge, the sentence I impose is one of 6 years' imprisonment.
Now, to achieve the proper totality, I cannot ignore the fact that whilst you have no record for violence, you repeated this form of violence on successive days. That repeat offending must be reflected in the overall sentence. I regard the proper totality of sentence in your case to be one of 8 years’ imprisonment.
To achieve that result, I shall order that 2 years of the sentence on the 1st charge will run consecutively to the sentence on the 2nd charge, and that the balance shall run concurrently.
The consequence of that sentencing is a term overall of 8 years' imprisonment.
I have made no direct reference to Mo Kwong Sang (1981) 1 HKLR 610 in my sentencing remarks, but I have had regard to it as the leading authority on sentence for robberies such as these.