A shootout between three police officers that left two dead and another seriously wounded at a subway pedestrian crossing, barely 500 meters from the Tsim Sha Tsui police station, has left the force shocked, distressed and with a Pandora's box of questions.Out of the panic and confusion of Friday's bloody incident emerged a mysterious revolver belonging to a policeman who was murdered five years ago that was later used to kill a security guard in a bank robbery.
The revolver was found on the suspect believed to have triggered the shootout - identified as police constable Tsui Po-ko, 35, attached to the Lantau division responsible for patrolling Hong Kong Disneyland.
Sources say he was once attached to a division in Lei Muk Shue, Tsuen Wan, where the murdered officer, Leung Shing-yan, served when he was shot dead on duty in 2001.
The discovery of Leung's revolver has made his case, which remains unsolved, even more complicated.
Commissioner of Police Dick Lee visited the scene within hours of the incident, followed by a visit to Queen Elizabeth Hospital before holding a press conference in which he expressed the shock that has reverberated throughout the force.
Secretary for Security Ambrose Lee, Secretary for the Civil Service Denise Yue and Chief Executive Donald Tsang joined the police chief in expressing condolences to the families of the two officers who died in the shootout.
Speaking from the hospital where the three men were taken, Tsang said invest
igations are well underway. After receiving an emergency radio signal around 1.15am Friday, scores of police officers arrived at the subway to find two uniformed police officers and the suspect, Tsui, who was in plain clothes, lying in pools of blood.
Tsui and a uniformed officer, Tsang Kwok-hang, 33, were found slumped together.
The second uniformed officer, Sin Kar-keung, 28, was found slumped against a wall a few meters from the other two.
Despite the narrow confines of the subway crossing at the junction of Austin Road and Canton Road, at least 10 shots were fired between two of the three men.
Tsang and Tsui were both certified dead half an hour later at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Sin, who received gunshot wounds to the face and leg, remains in a critical condition although he has since regained consciousness.
The serial number of Leung's revolver had been partially scratched off.
Preliminary investigations suggest that Tsui shot Tsang in the forehead from point-blank range, before firing another three shots, wounding Sin in the face and leg.
Sin responded with six shots, hitting Tsui with at least four. Sin is believed to have raised the emergency signal alerting the other officers.
How the two uniformed officers came to meet Tsui in a subway in the middle of the night remains a mystery.
There was no entry at the patrol logbook in the subway. The subway exits at four corners of the Austin Road- Canton Road junction.
The officers were found on the same side of Canton Road as the new residential complex, Victoria Towers.
Had the officers been crossing from, or toward, the other side of Canton Road they would have been at a vast construction site.
Investigators from the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau have seized a computer and clothing from Tsui's Tung Chung apartment.
The incident has brought back painful memories of the murder of Leung, then only 23, in March 2001.
Responding on his own to a bogus call, Leung had gone to a fifth-floor flat in Shek Wai Kok Estate in Tsuen Wan. He was shot five times from close range, once in the head, and his revolver was stolen.
A HK$1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the culprit or culprits remains on offer up to this day.
Leung was the first officer since 1994 to have been shot dead while on duty.
The outpouring of grief from the police force was unprecedented, and their grievances flooded onto Internet Web sites and chatrooms.
Then-senior superintendent of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, Sin Kam-wah, assured the public that no serving, retired or former police officer played a part in the shooting.
Sin Kam-wah recently completed a two-year jail sentence for accepting bribes after failing in his final appeal last May.
In December 2001, Leung's revolver resurfaced in a HK$500,000 bank robbery, used to shoot dead a Pakistani national guarding the Belvedere Garden Square branch of Hang Seng Bank in Castle Peak Road.
The three officers involved in Friday's shooting incident had served between 10 and 15 years in the police force.
Tsui won an outstanding student award at an internal examination in 2000.
Tsang and Sin Kar-keung were attached to the Tsim Sha Tsui division.
