Born in British Hong Kong in 1972, Poon Yuen Chung was living with her family in Kwun Tong[2] whilst studying art and also working as a shop assistant at the time of her arrest.
After dropping out of school aged 15, Poon started hanging out with a group of delinquents who spent their evenings smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol at various karaoke bars and billiard halls around Hong Kong.
[6] At about 11:50am on the morning of 16 July 1991, Poon and her fellow Hong Konger accomplice Lam Hoi Ka (林凯嘉) from the Choi Hung Estate[7] arrived at Changi Airport on a flight from Bangkok.
Customs officer Mohd Rawi's attention was caught by two large Louis Vuitton branded canvas bags on the baggage claim belt of Terminal 2, as there were no folds in the fabric at the bottom and he believed he could see the outline of solid objects inside.
[11] On 10 September 1993, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Ong Hian Sun described to the court how both Poon and Lam were stopped for a passport check at the customs counter of Terminal 2 at 11:50am on the day in question.
The night before they flew to Singapore, the girls drank some beer during a karaoke session, and since they were tired and needed rest Mrs Go then transferred the contents of Poon and Lam's original suitcases into the new bags on their behalf.
[14] When questioned on why herself and Lam had return tickets to Bangkok at the time of their arrest, while she had claimed they were planning on catching a flight home to Hong Kong from Singapore, Poon could not give any plausible explanation to the court.
[19] Shortly after the verdict, Hong Kong governor Chris Patten wrote to Poon's father to inform him that the British High Commission in Singapore was closely monitoring the progress of the legal proceedings.
Adding that while it would not be appropriate to intervene when judicial proceedings were still ongoing in Singapore, Patten confirmed he was in close contact with the British High Commission to determine what possible assistance they could provide to her in the meantime.
He also asserted that the packets containing the heroin were handled by customs officers without wearing gloves, therefore possibly obliterating any fingerprint evidence Poon could have relied on to back up her testimony about the Chinese couple.
[14] Rejecting all arguments, Chief Justice Yong Pung How ruled that Poon would not have mentioned the Chinese couple at a much later stage, knowing she was being charged with a capital offence of drug trafficking, if she had in fact not known what was in the bags.
[22][14] While on death row, Poon wrote a 4 page letter to her family describing how her life spun out of control, which was then published in the Eastern Express newspaper (as per her request) to serve as a warning to other troubled youths in Hong Kong regarding the perils of teenage rebellion.
[27] In a later interview with the South China Morning Post, which was conducted in the death row section of the Moon Crescent unit of Changi prison, Poon privately confessed to knowingly attempting to traffic heroin via Singapore, saying: "I did smuggle drugs, because a friend had crashed my motorbike, and I wanted money to buy a new one.
[29] On the same morning, another two Hong Kongers, Lam Cheuk Wang and Tong Ching Man, as well as two other drug convicts (Nigerian citizen Chris Chinenye Obaka and Singaporean national Yeo Hee Seng), were also executed at the same gallows as Poon.