A construction worker has been remanded in a psychiatric centre pending trial for outraging public decency after allegedly pouring liquid onto a 17-year-old girl.
The West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court on Monday obliged with a request from the prosecution to adjourn the case to March 11 to obtain psychological evaluations and determine whether 56-year-old Li Kwok-ding was fit to enter a plea.
On February 23, Li “[committed] an act of a lewd, obscene, and disgusting nature, which outraged public decency” by splashing the girl with an “unknown liquid” on Great George Street in Causeway Bay, according to a charge sheet.
Li has been remanded in Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre.
An officer caught the suspect in the act on Friday night, Senior Inspector Yee Hiu-yin of the Mong Kok district crime squad told reporters on Saturday.
Initial investigations showed that Li had carried the liquid in a vacuum flask, poured it into his palm, and quickly walked up to the victim from behind, Yee said.
The liquid was odourless, but had some colour and was “slightly warm,” said Senior Inspector Leung Sin-yi of the Mong Kok district intelligence unit. The liquid has been confiscated for further inspection.
Police received nine reports between January 20 and February 18 from women aged 16 to 32 who said they were splashed with liquid in Mong Kok, Leung said, adding that one woman had her buttocks soiled twice in one hour.
Yee also said the police were aware that victims had shared similar experiences online, and called on victims to come forward.
Speaking out
An Instagram page set up to call attention to the liquid-splashing cases, meanwhile, has received more than 100 submissions from victims in the three weeks since it was set up.
In a Chinese statement, sexual assault crisis centre RainLily said: “We are concerned about cases of ‘splashing unknown liquid on private parts’ in which the suspect had displayed a behavioural pattern of targeting women. We believe this is a social phenomenon rather than an isolated incident.”
Li appears to have a criminal record dating back more than a decade. An Oriental Daily report dated March 8, 2008 mentions a man with the same name, then aged 40, being sentenced to three months in jail for indecent assault.
He was arrested and charged after a 22-year-old woman noticed liquid on her dress while walking in Victoria Park. It was identified as semen and later found to match DNA obtained from Li’s underwear.
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