A bloody Chinese New Year: when street battle between bank robbers and Hong Kong police left a teenager dead
- Five heavily armed men went on the run with a lockbox containing 138.4 million Japanese yen in the run-up to Chinese New Year in 1984
- In the course of a street battle with Hong Kong police, a stray bullet fatally wounded a teenage waitress
“‘Wild West’ shoot-out in North Point” read a headline in the South China Morning Post on February 1, 1984, after a street battle between police and bank robbers the day before left a young woman dead and two men injured.
“Guns blazed along the streets […] with exchanges of at least 17 shots with police” as five heavily armed men tried to escape with a lockbox containing 138.4 million Japanese yen [about HK$4.6 million] nabbed from an armoured car outside Po Sang Bank, in Central, the story continued.
In their mad dash across town, the “well-dressed” gang hijacked three vehicles, one after the other, while being pursued not only by police, but also a zealous Sing Pao Daily News reporter and his driver, who dodged bullets fired from the smashed back window of one of the hijacked cars.
After the robbers crashed their first escape vehicle, they opened fire on police in the middle of a busy street in North Point, where a stray bullet fatally hit 19-year-old waitress Li Yuet-kam in the head.
“One of the [five] gangsters […] had a gun blazing in each hand as they ran through crowded streets,” the Post reported.
