A 44-year-old Thai woman was sentenced to three years jail on Monday at the District Court in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island for two counts of arson.
Earlier, the court heard that defendant Sunisa Wan started a fire in front of district councilor Bill Tang Ka-piu’s office at Yut Tung Estate in Tung Chung on Lantau Island by burning a poster and rubbish on October 2 last year, Sing Pao Daily reported.
Luckily, the office was closed and no one was hurt.
The defendant then went to a community center in the same area and lit some paper stuck in a beer bottle and threw it into the center.
She then closed the glass door and held the door handrail, trying to stop staff inside from leaving the center. However, the fire went out in a short period of time, and no one was hurt during the incident.
Police later arrested the defendant in the same public housing estate.
Wan, who married a local man, claimed she was insulted by people who called her a “prostitute”. She had gone to Tang’s office and the community center for assistance but staff had failed to help her.
The defendant admitted to the court that she was an alcoholic but said she would stop drinking after the incident, vowing that she would not commit the crime again.
But the judge said arson was a serious crime and could cost people their lives, so a sentence had to be imposed to deter from doing that.