ACT Supreme Court finds Chinese national guilty over part in violent home invasion
Xiantao Shang, 38, has been found guilty of aggravated burglary and assault by joint commission after he went to the apartment with a second man in June 2023, looking for a woman known as 'Linda'.
Shang said she owed him over $100,000, with more owed to the other man, 46-year-old Wengao Zheng. The debt appeared to be gambling related.
'Linda' had not been answering their calls and had left town for a while.
Before the home invasion the pair discovered she had returned to Canberra.
Justice Verity McWilliam said in her judgement 'Linda' had once been the lover of Zheng, who did some "detective work of his own" tracking her to the apartment through a site advertising sexual services.
Zheng pleaded guilty to his role in the home invasion.
The court heard the men laid a trap, getting a third person to make an appointment.
When they arrived at the apartment the woman who lived there said they pushed the door aggressively and forced their way in, speaking in Mandarin Chinese and demanding to speak to 'Linda'.
The woman's husband told them to leave and called police, when the altercation kicked off.
"Do you know what we do in China? We were in the special forces," the male victim said Zheng told him.
Later, Zheng admitted that it wasn't true and that he had never been in the military, saying he only made the comment to frighten the couple.
He also said he'd spoken to the pair in the aftermath.
"We were here to look for someone, we were not here to fight," Zheng said to the couple.
"If you could have talked nicely, we would not be in this."
For his part, Shang maintained he had only acted in self defence.
But Justice McWilliam rejected that, saying the couple were subjected to a brutal attack, where the man was punched and kicked, and the woman attacked as she tried to pull Shang away from her husband.
Justice McWilliam said she accepted Shang didn't punch the woman in the face, and that an alleged punch to her chest was actually a push, but she said the woman had been kicked to the ground.
She said it was Zheng's behaviour that was of most concern.
"I find that he set upon the female complainant in a manner that even he admitted was consistent with him losing physical control," Justice McWilliam said.
Justice McWilliam said even though Shang had admonished Zheng for hitting a woman, it was too late, and the elements of the offence by joint commission had been proven.
Shang will be sentenced in September.
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