A Hong Kong court has spared a police inspector from jail for driving through a red light and causing serious injuries to a pedestrian two years ago, highlighting his “excellent” services in the force and remorse for the crime.
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The District Court on Monday sentenced Iu San-san to 240 hours of community service and disqualified him from driving for two years, after the presiding judge found the case was much less serious than similar precedents that resulted in jail time.
The court convicted the 30-year-old officer in July of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm, rejecting his defence that his momentary inattention to the surroundings only constituted the lighter offence of careless driving.
Iu, who was attached to the police’s Kowloon East regional headquarters, crashed his private car into a taxi after running a red light at the junction of Nathan Road and Mong Kok Road in the early hours of June 5, 2023.
The cabby lost control of his vehicle and hit a woman who was standing on the roadside.
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The woman sustained bone fractures to her right leg, with her shinbone permanently reduced by 3cm (1.2 inches).
The inspector, who received his probationary driving licence four months before the accident, told the trial that he had mistaken a green pedestrian light for the traffic light while being distracted by a narcotics case he was investigating at the time.