Two Hong Kong women die after Mini car found idling at side of road
Pair were found inside locked vehicle parked on roadside in Ma On Shan with engine still running, but police source doubts it was suicide
PUBLISHED : Friday, 22 May, 2015, 11:54pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 23 May, 2015, 1:03am
Clifford Lo and Shirley Zhao
The wife and daughter of a Chinese University professor were found unconscious in the parked Mini Cooper and later died. Photo: Edmond So
Police are investigating whether foul play was involved in the death of a 17-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother who died after being found unconscious in a Mini Cooper in Ma On Shan yesterday.
A police source said it did not appear to be suicide.
The women are the wife and daughter of a professor, surnamed Khaw, at Chinese University's faculty of medicine, the police source said. The source said Khaw also worked as an anaesthetist at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin.
Police sources said their investigation showed the pair left their home in Tai Tung village in Sai Sha Road, Sai Kung, at about 2.30pm. A jogger first noticed the yellow Mini Cooper car parked with its engine running outside Sai O village on Sai Sha Road at about 3.30pm.
The jogger became suspicious when he returned to the area about an hour later and found the car was still parked with its engine running. When he looked inside he spotted the two unconscious women.
The teenage girl was found in the front passenger seat of the locked vehicle and her mother was in the driver's seat.
Firefighters broke a car window to rescue the women and attempted to resuscitate them.
The women were taken to Prince of Wales Hospital where they were declared dead.
"The pair were buckled up [in their seat belts]. Initial investigation showed there was no sign of fighting or struggling on board the vehicle and no obvious injuries were found on them," the police source said.
"All the windows were closed and the engine was running. No burned charcoal was found on board."
He said no suicide note was found and that the case did not appear to be a suicide.
He said the cause of death, which would be determined by a postmortem examination, remained a mystery.
Lo Kok-keung, of Polytechnic University's department of mechanical engineering, said if the incident proved not to be a suicide, the most likely theory would be that there was a crack in the car's exhaust pipe.
Such a crack would have allowed poisonous gases to rise and seep into the passenger compartment of the car.
He said if the women were asleep, they might not have been aware of the gases and may have passed out after breathing in too much carbon monoxide.
"That's why you should never sleep in a car when the air conditioner is on, because it will create a comfortable environment and you tend not to wake up easily if things go wrong," Lo said.
In 2008, a businessman, his wife and their two-year-old son were found dead at their home at Ta Kwu Ling, along with a heartbreaking letter describing how they decided to take their lives because he made a "big mistake".
The following year, a businessman and his wife, who returned to the city from Canada to start a business, were found dead in an apparent suicide pact at their home in Yuen Long.
