Notorious Hong Kong robber Yip Kai-foon’s quiet and afflicted final days
Yip Kai-foon, infamous in the 1980s for daring hold-ups using AK-47s, was a taciturn and extremely unwell prisoner towards the end, inquest hears
One of Hong Kong’s most notorious criminals saw out his last days unable to talk after years of struggling to sleep or urinate, his inquest heard on Wednesday.
Far fallen from his AK-47-wielding heyday of the 1980s and 1990s, Yip Kai-foon was portrayed in court as someone who kept problems to himself. While in prison, he would decline treatment despite a string of chronic conditions that caused more than 20 hospital visits starting from 2009 until his death last year.
Yip, a smoker, was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer just months before his death. That spread to his brain, leaving him unable to speak in his last days, the Coroner’s Court heard.
“He rarely talked to us,” Lai Hon-man, an assistant officer at the Correctional Services Department, said when asked if Yip made any complaints before he was sent to the hospital for the last time.
Lai, along with doctors and other jail officers, was summoned to testify before five jurors, expected to return a verdict over the cause of Yip’s death on Thursday.
