Guardian News
Canton takeaway boss Tony Leung gets restraining order at Macclesfield Magistrates Court
8:30am Wednesday 22nd February 2012
A KNUTSFORD businessman who stalked a wealthy housewife for a year has been given a restraining order.
Tony Leung, director of Chinese takeaway Canton, in Toft Road, trailed Michelle Warnes around the aisles of Sainsburys and Marks and Spencer stores.
Macclesfield Magistrates’ Court heard that the married father-of-two kept Mrs Warnes under surveillance and would hold up a messenger bag as though he was filming her.
The mother-of-one, who used to live in Knutsford, began dressing down in tracksuits and borrowed her daughter’s car in the hope she would not be recognised.
The ordeal left her so terrified that she was told to take up self-defence classes. She now shops online and even avoids Chinese restaurants.
Leung, 49, of Manchester Road, Wilmslow, began stalking Mrs Warnes in May 2010 as she shopped in Sainsburys, in Altrincham Giving evidence from behind a screen, Mrs Warnes said: “I was in the store when I noticed this Chinese man following and staring at me.
“It was clear he wanted to make eye contact with me. He scared me and made me feel very unsafe. Then he just disappeared.”
Mrs Warnes switched to a Marks and Spencers store eight miles away at Handforth Dean but Leung appeared there too.
She tried to avoid Leung by shopping in Sainsburys in Wilmslow but burst into tears when she saw him stood in front of her.
Mrs Warnes, from Bowdon, added: “He stopped directly in front of me and stared and I broke down and cried.
“He always had a messenger bag and kept moving it.
“It felt like he was filming me.”
Leung was arrested after Mrs Warnes took down the registration number of his VW Golf car parked in Sainsburys in Wilmslow.
It emerged Leung had been accused of a ‘strikingly similar’ stalking campaign against another woman but she was unable to give evidence.
In May, last year, police went to Leung’s home to warn him about his behaviour but Mrs Warnes bumped into him again at another store.
He was arrested the following July.
John Wolfson, defending, said: “He’s a man of prior good character and he has a family of young children and a business. The mind plays strange tricks sometimes. She may have genuinely believed Mr Leung was acting inappropriately but in truth he was not.”
Leung added: “I live in Wilmslow so I also shop in the various supermarkets around the town. I don’t always buy goods when I’m there – sometimes I go to compare prices.”
As well as the restraining order, Leung was sentenced to a 12 month community order with supervision and ordered to complete 300 hours of unpaid work.
Leung, who plans to appeal against the conviction, was also ordered to pay £620 court costs and £1,000 compensation to the victim.
A spokesman for Cheshire Police said: “Leung terrified his victim to the point she changed her routines and dressed down in an attempt to avoid his attention.
“Leung violated her privacy and her right to live a normal life. I hope that his conviction brings home to him the seriousness of his actions and that this type of behaviour is never acceptable and will never be tolerated.”