Tsui Po-ko

Who was Tsui Po-ko?

Tsui Po-ko was a police constable in the Hong Kong Police Force who was implicated in a number of crimes, which included bank robbery and murder.

He died when he and another police constable shot each other in a gun battle in a Tsim Sha Tsui underpass. The inquest into the events leading up to his death aroused great interest in Hong Kong, as it unravelled a string of intriguing events, and revealed the secret life of a policeman with a delusional state of mind.

On 25 April 2007, the five-person jury in the Coroner's court unanimously decided that Tsui was responsible for injuring one and killing two fellow police officers and a bank security guard, on three separate occasions. The jury returned a verdict that he had been "lawfully killed" by fellow officer Tsang Kwok-hang in a shootout. The inquest lasted 36 days, one of the longest ever of inquests in Hong Kong.

Assistant Police Commissioner John Lee said that this was "an exceptional case". Coroner Michael Chan Pik-kiu called "the most difficult" inquest for a jury he had ever encountered.