Police have arrested a 50-year-old Pakistani man for allegedly stealing a backpack from a cardboard scavenger while she slept in Central on Hong Kong Island on January 7.
Dressed in a suit, the man was spotted walking in Des Voeux Road in Central by officers at 5am on Saturday, Headline Daily reported. He matched the description of the alleged thief, whose crime was caught on a surveillance camera.
Police said they found a mobile phone belonging to the elderly scavenger in the possession of the man, who is an asylum seeker. He was arrested for the alleged theft and for failing to produce proof of identity.
The 66-year-old female scavenger, with the surname Cheng, said she had woken from a sleep outside a shop in Central on January 7 to find her backpack missing. It contained HK$1,500 (US$191) in cash, an identity card, a bankbook and a mobile phone.
Police later found that the surveillance camera at a nearby shop had captured the whole incident. A Facebook post with footage from the camera showing the alleged thief went viral on social media.
Read: Hidden camera catches man in suit robbing elderly scavenger