Cook avoids jail after charge downgraded

 

Corner where the wounding allegedly happened (Google Maps photo)

A Filipino cook accused of wounding another man, avoided getting jailed after he was convicted of the less-serious offense of common assault.

Deputy Magistrate Chung Wing-sze, handed down the sentence of two weeks imprisonment, suspended for 15 months, on Michael Tan at the conclusion of his trial at Eastern Court on Friday (Dec. 27). 

With the sentence, Tan need not serve his prison sentence as long as he does not reoffend within 15 months.

Tan,  48 years old,  had denied a charge of “unlawfully and maliciously” wounding fellow Filipino Domingo Nunag, who emerged with a bleeding head from a fight with Tan at the corner of Water St. and Queen’s Road west in Sai Wan last Dec. 11, 2023.

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Magistrate Chung raised the possibility of an alternative charge to wounding, an offense punishable with imprisonment of up to three years under section 9 of the Offenses Against the Person Ordinance, after Tan’s lawyer defense summed up his case last Dec. 24.

The lawyer asserted that the prosecution failed to prove Tan caused the wound on Nunag, and failed to disprove the defense assertion that the wound could have been caused by something other than Tan’s action because he fell backwards during the fight.

He noted that Nunag’s recollection was unclear, and his evidence in court was contradictory, such as when he said Tan used a knife when the police did not find the knife at the scene and the CCTV footage of the incident did not show Tan holding a knife.

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The lawyer also said Tan threw an aquarium at him from his flat’s window upstairs, which he described as a concoction.

Nunag told the court that he was dizzy to explain the errors in his testimony, which also raised questions on his reliability as a witness, the lawyer said.

The defense lawyer also said Nunag, who has had six criminal convictions, had gone twice to Tan’s flat uninvited and sent him a threatening message.

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Nunag also was the aggressor, stepping forward to kick Tan and throwing an object at him, thus raising the self defense argument which would justify the wounding if it had been proven, the lawyer said.

“Prosecution has not challenged this defense,” the lawyer added.

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