Hong Kong man, 19, arrested for allegedly murdering girlfriend and leaving her body in Taiwan
A 19-year-old man was on Tuesday arrested by Hong Kong police after he was suspected of murdering his girlfriend, 20, on a Taiwan trip and dumping her body near a Taipei subway station.
The badly decomposed body of Poon Hiu-wing, a student from the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education, was discovered in a bushy area near a metro station by Taipei police.
Authorities on the self-ruled island had received details from Hong Kong police before the find, Taiwanese media reported.
The couple arrived in Taipei on February 8 and checked in five days later at Purple Garden Hotel near Zhongshan MRT station, a Hong Kong police source said.
The man, surnamed Chan, an associate degree student, returned to Hong Kong alone on February 17.
The woman's father approached police for help on March 5 after losing contact with his daughter, the source said.
On Tuesday, officers from the missing persons unit in the East Kowloon region approached the suspect in Tseung Kwan O.
An ATM card belonging to the deceased woman was found on Chan. He told police he had used the card to withdraw about HK$13,000 (US$1,660), and officers arrested him for theft.
At about 9pm on Tuesday, Taipei police located Poon's body in a meadow near Zhuwei MRT station in Tamsui district, about 15km (9.3 miles) north of the hotel.
In surveillance footage from the hotel released by Taiwanese media, Chan was seen leaving with what appeared to be a heavy suitcase on February 17. Local police suspected it was used to store Poon's body.
In a Facebook post in November, Poon said that Chan had told her she was his first and last girlfriend, without elaborating.
The case was a complicated one for authorities on both sides, according to the source, because there had been no previous incident in which a Hongkonger had allegedly committed an offence in Taiwan and returned to the city.
Police in Taiwan might request for the suspect to be sent back to them to face charges, and Hong Kong authorities would then need to discuss procedures with the Department of Justice for a transfer of custody.
Currently no extradition agreement exists between Hong Kong and Taiwan.
In April 2016, Taiwanese authorities expelled four Hongkongers - three men and a woman - over an incident a month earlier in which a badly decomposed body was found encased in cement in a flat in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong.
The four were arrested by Hong Kong police upon their return to the city.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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