Posted on: Friday, September 28, 2001

Police/Courts
'China' Chong dead in apparent prison suicide

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

A convicted murderer with a lengthy criminal and prison record is dead after apparently taking his own life in a federal prison this week.

Richard Lee Tuck Chong, who went by the name of "China," was found dead in his cell Tuesday at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc, Calif.

Chong, 50, was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the 1997 murder of William Noa, 33.

Chong's apparent suicide Tuesday coincided with the fourth anniversary of Noa's death. Chong admitted to shooting Noa on a Makaha beach over a $100 drug debt on the evening of Sept. 24, 1997. Noa died the next day.

Chong's death was confirmed by federal public defender Michael Weight, who represented him on the murder charge. Weight said Chong had been in isolation since arriving at Lompoc less than a month ago. No other details were available.

Weight said that when he spoke with Chong recently, there was no indication that the inmate was suicidal.

"If he decided to take himself out, he would do it his way: quietly and without any fanfare and certainly wouldn't broadcast that he was going to do it," Weight said. "I think that Richard decided that he'd had enough of prison life and he was going to come home on his terms."

When Chong was charged with Noa's murder, prosecutors sought the death penalty because a firearm was used in drug-trafficking activity that led to the death. In January 2000, Chong pleaded guilty to murder; in exchange, the prosecution dropped its plan to seek the death sentence.

But Chong attempted to withdraw his guilty plea and said medication he was taking impaired his ability to think clearly. He never denied shooting Noa, but said he didn't intend to kill him.

Federal Judge Alan Kay rejected Chong's request to withdraw the plea and sentenced him to prison in June.

Chong's death penalty trial was the first in Hawai'i since capital punishment was abolished in the state in 1957. In 1999 U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno authorized the U.S. attorney here to seek the death penalty under federal law, citing factors such as Chong's lengthy and violent criminal history.