Man cleared of Hoxton Oriental food crusher murder
The row broke out over a loaf of bread. - Credit: PA Archive/Press Association Ima
A Vietnamese man accused of bludgeoning his former landlord to death with a giant wooden pestle was cleared of murder after claiming he had slept with the alleged victim’s wife.
Tran Quang Hung, 48, was said to have battered 74-year-old Ngoc Giam Dang over the head with a 36cm Oriental food crusher as he slept.
Dang, of Vietnamese origin, suffered multiple fractures to his skull and eye socket and died four hours later in hospital.
The prosecution said Hung wanted revenge after Mr Dang threw him out of the flat in Geffrye Court, Hoxton, and threatened to report him to immigration.
But Hung said he arrived at the home on July 3 last year to find his former landlord already dead and ran away because he was scared.
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He claimed he had been having a six-month affair with Mr Dang’s 48 year-old wife Phu Hang Pham and he was in love with her.
An Old Bailey jury found Hung not guilty of murder last Wednesday.
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There was a long-running feud between the two men because Mr Dang was suspicious his wife was being unfaithful, it was said.
The pair came to blows in the street a month before the murder and Mr Dang smashed Hung’s laptop computer, the jury heard.
Hung claimed he had sex with Ms Pham while he was living at the flat despite her husband being in the room next door watching television.
Ms Phang however insisted the relationship did not go beyond that of “lodger and landlady”.
Hung, who paid £50 a week to rent a room in the couple’s flat between October 2011 and April 2014, claimed Mr Dang was often aggressive and violent towards his wife.
Hung, of Mare Street, said he had been sleeping rough on the night of the murder.
