Police in Hong Kong have arrested a 54-year-old man in connection with the brutal 1999 murder of a female newspaper vendor in Sham Shui Po, nearly 27 years after the deadly attack shocked the city.
The suspect, surnamed Lin, has been charged with murder and is expected to appear before the Kowloon City Magistrates’ Courts on Sunday.
At a press conference on Saturday, West Kowloon Regional Crime Unit senior superintendent Jia Jinlin said the suspect was handed over to Hong Kong police at Shenzhen Bay Port following cooperation with authorities from Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department and the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau.
Police believe the suspect played a key role in organising the murder by recruiting three knife attackers and arranging transport for them to travel to the crime scene.
According to investigators, the suspect fled to mainland China after the killing and later became involved in separate criminal cases there, spending years in prison before eventually being arrested in Shenzhen on Friday.
The victim, 40-year-old newspaper vendor Ho Wai-ha, widely known as “Ha Jie”, was attacked at around 5.15am on September 22, 1999 while working at a newspaper stall along Tai Po Road in Sham Shui Po.
Police said three men armed with meat cleavers ambushed and repeatedly slashed the woman before escaping in a private car.
Ho suffered multiple chop wounds and later died from massive blood loss.
Authorities believe the murder was linked to a business dispute.
The case was handled by the West Kowloon Regional Crime Unit, which continued investigating the murder over the years.
Between 2005 and 2010, police arrested and prosecuted six other men connected to the case.
Following High Court proceedings, five men were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, while another man was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 12 years.
Police said the latest arrest highlights the close cooperation between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese law enforcement agencies in pursuing serious crimes, even decades after offences were committed.
