By Teoh El Sen - Free Malaysia Today,AMPANG: The family of noodle seller Ho Chei Hang is crying out for justice as he lies in hospital with wounds in his back that were caused by police bullets.
Police plan to charge him for drug possession and attempted murder, but the family swears that he is an upright citizen.
“It’s the police who should be charged for attempted murder,” said his lawyer, Keppy Wong, at a press conference this morning.
Ho, 32, was shot in the back four times while he was driving his car in a residential area in Kepong at dusk last Tuesday.
Police said two plainclothes officers opened fire because Ho tried to attack them by ramming his car into them. They said they suspected that he was carrying illegal drugs.
According to Wong, Ho was in the area to chat with a friend about car accessories. He was driving home when the two officers starting chasing him on foot and shouting at him. Not knowing that they were policemen, he drove off. The two opened fire several times.
"After he was shot, he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into the brick wall of a house, not because he was trying to ram into the police,” said Wong. “The car door opened and he fell into a monsoon drain."
Wong said police told him they found 45 sleeping pills and no weapons in the car.
"The sleeping pills were for his mother, who has difficulty sleeping,” he added. “Those are not illegal."
He said the policemen neither identified themselves nor fired a warning shot.
"Furthermore, why didn't they shoot at the tires? Why should they open fire so many times until he was shot four times?"
'He's a good man'
Wong described Ho’s survival as a miracle. An ambulance took one hour to arrive at the scene, he said.
Doctors at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital have extracted three bullets from Ho’s back. They said they were waiting until he got stronger before removing another slug, which is lodged in a shoulder.
"He was handcuffed to the bed even though he could barely speak and move,” Wong said. “That's violating his human rights."
The family has lodged a police report about the shooting and plans to complain to Suhakam.
"My husband is innocent,” said Ho's wife, Tan Chsiew Yong, a 29-year-old medical student. “Why did they have to shoot him?
"I was told they shot more than four times. They shot wildly. It was a public place. What if they had hit someone else? There's even a kindergarten there."Tan wept as she spoke.
"My husband has no prior records, he is a good man. The only vice he has is smoking. We go out for supper sometimes, just the two of us. He doesn't have any other outside activities. When he has time, he makes fishballs at home.
"When I saw him, I thought he was going to die. He had all these pipes all over his body.
“We just want some justice.”
Ketamine in the car
Sentul district police chief ACP Zakaria Pagan said police had received information about two cars driven by suspicious individuals in the area and had tried to stop the two men for checks.
"However, police were forced to react when one of the cars tried to ram into the officers," he said, adding that the other car, a white Nissan Fairlady, drove off.
"We cannot take things for granted when we believe it is a drug related offence as the suspects may have a weapon."
He said police was treating the case as attempted murder and drug possession.
They found the drug Ketamine in the car, he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment