A violent Taiwanese backpacker dubbed the “housemate from hell” has admitted terrorising her landlord and flatmates during a three-month revenge campaign after being evicted from her Melbourne share house.
Tsai-Wei Hung, 33, pleaded guilty to more than a dozen charges in the County Court of Victoria on Monday, including arson, extortion, reckless conduct endangering serious injury, and dangerous driving.
The court heard Hung, who came to Australia on a working holiday visa in 2022, became so irate when she was evicted from landlord Lin Zhang’s home in Clyde North on March 10 last year that police had to be called, Australian Associated Press and Newswire reported.
Prosecutor David Grey told the court Hung returned two hours later to pick up more belongings, became “extremely angry and aggressive”, and threw eggs at the garage door.
She then drove her Toyota Camry at speed at Mr Zhang and former housemate Chung-Ting Yuan, stopping just a metre away from them, and then drove into the garage, damaging the roller door and three cars parked inside.
The next day she returned and damaged the vehicles again, but turned herself in to Pakenham Police Station where she was arrested, charged and granted bail after telling police she “just wanted to scare them”.
But three months later she went back to the home at 2.50am, set the front door and two cars on fire with petrol, and the next day sent another former housemate, Tina Zhao, a message demanding money from Zhang.
“You tell Lin give me $30,000 before 8pm tonight, and everything that happened between us will be gone …. Please tell him that he and his family have to be careful or they will have the same experience as me, or even lose more than that,” she said.
Mr Zhang arranged for his tenants to stay at his home in Berwick that evening and invited friends over to help protect the home, where his children and their grandmother were also living, but at 4.45am on June 12 Hung turned up and poured accelerant on his front door and set it alight.
She yelled “go to hell” in Mandarin before running off, and the home’s occupants managed to put the fire out before it spread.
Hung was arrested on June 14 after a public appeal for assistance and has been in custody ever since, but six victim impact statements read to the court showed the targets of her revenge spree were still living in fear.
“Ever since Hung came into our lives everything has become really intense. I keep worrying that I’ll be burnt to death,” one wrote.
Mr Zhang, who described Hung as the “housemate from hell” said the rampage had “permanently damaged my sense of safety,” and that the whole situation had been a “disaster and a nightmare for us”.
Hung’s barrister, Courtney Hart, told the court her client had since been diagnosed with PTSD and consistent depressive disorder, which led to “an inability to stop the rumination in relation” to her eviction, where she alleged she was assaulted and felt wronged by her landlord and former housemates.
The case was adjourned to January 20.
Header image: Left, right, Tsai-Wei Hung (supplied).
The post Taiwanese ‘housemate from hell’ admits terrifying revenge campaign in Melbourne first appeared on The Noticer.
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