> Casual school date ends in rape

2009/07/22

SETIU: A casual date in school went horribly wrong for a 13-year-old pupil when she was raped by her senior in a classroom.

The alleged rape took place at a secondary school in Permaisuri here on Monday, a public holiday.

The Form One pupil had agreed to meet her 15-year-old boyfriend in school, which was deserted except for the school guard, who had not noticed the pair sneaking in.

The boy persuaded her to follow him into a classroom and forced himself on her.

District police chief Deputy Superintendent Sheikh Othman Abdul Rahim said the girl’s mother noticed she was unusually quiet when she went home after the incident.

On being questioned, the girl confessed to what had happened.

> Girl `cut up and flushed down toilet’

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

A young transport worker strangled a teenage schoolgirl after having sex with her, dismembered her body, flushed her remains down a toilet and then dumped her head in the sea, the High Court heard.

Ting Kai-tai, 24, denies murdering Wong Ka-mui, 16, inside his Shek Kip Mei flat on April 27 last year.

In opening the case yesterday, the prosecution said Ting had told police he met the girl on the internet.

She was allegedly involved in compensated dating – a euphemism for sexual services. The night before they met, Ting had taken soft drugs in a disco and remained “very high” when he returned home, the court heard.

The next day he met up with Wong, who identified herself as “KiKi.”

They met at Sham Shui Po MTR station at 1pm and went to Ting’s flat in Shek Kip Mei.

After they had sex, Ting strangled Wong for one to two minutes before he started to feel dizzy, the court was told.

Wong weighed only about 36 kilograms, while Ting was nearly three times her weight.

After awaking, he saw blood coming from Wong’s mouth. When he discovered she was no longer breathing, he dismembered her then sliced the flesh away from the bone, which he chopped into small pieces and flushed down the toilet.

He wrapped her head in a plastic bag, placed that in a paper bag and then took a bus to Kowloon City pier where he threw it into the sea, the prosecution said.

The jury was shown a video in which Ting told police how he had disposed of Wong.

But the video version as to what he did with the body differed from evidence given in court. In the video, he said he went to a nearby market to look for plastic bags, a foam box and trolley.

He then put the body and some bricks inside a big plastic bag, which he placed inside the foam box. He then carted the box on a trolley to the pier.

Ting was arrested after Wong was reported missing by her family.

Police traced him via Wong’s telephone records and located him on May 6, nine days after she was killed, the court was told.

Three days later, police discovered human tissue in a pipe in Ting’s building, the DNA of which matched that of Wong. Ting admitted in a police statement he did not turn himself in immediately because he feared he would be charged with murder and face life imprisonment.

However, he called a friend and told him he “had killed a girl.” He also asked the friend to tell police.

Ting told officers he wanted to deny the killing, but later felt bad as “he had no reason to kill her, but did not know why he had done it.”

The hearing continues today before High Court Judge Alan Wright.

> Man charged over alleged laptop porn

Customs officers at Adelaide Airport have arrested and charged a man with importing pornography.

The Chinese national, 22, arrived on a flight from Singapore yesterday.

Customs alleges an inspection of a laptop in his luggage found a video file of child pornography.

The man’s house at Glandore was later searched.

The man has been granted bail to face court in November.

> Hot hippo gets stuck in water tower

An overheating hippo was so desperate to cool down that he climbed over the side of a 3m (10ft) water tower for a nice long soak.

However, after happily splashing around for a while, the mammal found it could not get out of the pool and was well and truly stuck.

Luckily, a farm worker noticed water spilling over the side of the concrete container and spotted two enormous nostrils poking out of the tank.

He immediately rang for help and, within hours, rescuers arrived at the farm in Alkmaar, just outside Nelspruit in South Africa.

Equipped with a hydraulic crane and a cage, hippo hunter Chris Hobkirk and his team from the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Association set to work. In a four-hour operation, they drained the tank and used poles to gently nudge the hippo into the 3m-long (10ft) steel cage before winching it to safety.

Mr Hobkirk – who has rescued more than 180 stranded hippos in the past six years – said it was a tricky procedure but he was glad with the outcome.

‘Maybe we got lucky with this one. In the past, I have removed hippos from small dams. In those cases, the water levels have always been much lower so this was different.’

Although this hippo went to extreme lengths to cool down it is by nature a semi-aquatic animal. They usually stay in water all day until stepping on to land at dusk to graze.