23rd September 2026 – (Hong Kong) Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department officers staged a fourth consecutive day of dog catches in Yuen Long after a suspected fatal mauling, and one microchipped animal taken in the sweeps is registered to Paws Guardian Rescue Shelter founder Kent Luk Ka-chit, who says he faces two AFCD charges.
A 27-year-old woman was found dead early on Sunday on a pavement along Po Wai South Road bearing multiple bite and scratch wounds. Police reviewing CCTV said three dogs had chased her and she is suspected to have died from dog bites. Today’s joint AFCD-police operation near the scene was scheduled from about 5pm to 10pm. In the previous three days officers netted five dogs, at least three of them chipped.
Kent told reporters that of three dogs seized on Monday, two carried chips and one stood in his name. He said the department had charged him with failing to keep a dog under proper control and keeping a dog with an expired licence. The animal, named Dai B, is a 13-year-old mongrel of about 26 kilograms. Kent said he rescued it in 2018 after it was hurt fighting other warehouse dogs while living with a scavenger woman, registered it under his name, arranged sterilisation through an SPCA mongrel programme and returned it to her care because she would not put a chip in her own name.
He attended the New Territories North Animal Management Centre today to give a statement and learned Dai B was wandering alone and slowly when caught, seemed gentle and was secured with a rope around the neck. The dog remains detained pending DNA saliva tests to establish whether it joined the attack; a match could bring extra charges. Kent said he went back to the scavenger woman’s flat today, got no reply, and that Paws Guardian Rescue Shelter would take Dai B if it is released.
Roughly 10 dogs around Po Wai are registered under Kent’s name and more than 10 under other animal-group volunteers, he said. Chip holders must be individuals rather than organisations, and unchipped strays seized by AFCD are often destroyed after four days — “we don’t want the dog to die” — so volunteers commonly pay for sterilisation and vaccines and register animals themselves when warehouse keepers or scavengers refuse chips. He called the four-day DNA-driven hunt fair so investigators can identify the true attackers, and said dogs shown to have harmed people should be destroyed. He also claimed warehouse owners near Po Wai, under public pressure, had started surrendering packs of dogs to AFCD and feared those animals face a dead end, criticising weak enforcement against abandonment, the absence of a full trap-neuter-return programme and the need for tighter checks on pets smuggled from the mainland.