When a watch shop robber asked a Hong Kong judge for the death penalty instead of making him do time
- A man who robbed a Hong Kong watch shop in 1962 asked the sentencing judge to have him hanged rather than sent to prison where he would ‘be surely killed’
- The thief, who with his accomplice escaped by bicycle, attempted suicide in his cell, believing his police informer past would catch up with him

“A man convicted of larceny and robbery at Kowloon District Court yesterday asked the judge to hang him rather than send him to jail,” reported the South China Morning Post on November 11, 1962.
Wong King-hong and his accomplice “held up a watch shop in Kowloon yesterday and ran out with 37 wristwatches worth $7,000. They escaped on bicycles,” stated a Post report dated October 6.
“During the trial, Wong, who claimed he had been a police informer, said that if he went to jail, where ‘everybody’ knew him, he would be ‘surely killed’,” said a Post report on November 11.
“Since the hearing began on November 7, Wong has made several rather unusual requests of Judge T. Creeden”, including that “all news reporters leave the courtroom, but this was not acted upon”, that report said.

According to a November 8 article, Wong said that “he helped the police in the last two years, and if the story were published in the newspapers, ‘the convicts in prison may give me trouble’.