Man Strangles Wife Over $20k Gambling Debt

An unemployed man has confessed to strangling his wife to death after she discovered he had rung up $20k of gambling debts and called him a “coward” for losing their savings.
Samuel Powshing Kung admitted killing his wife, Gina Lew, during their domestic dispute on June 9th, 2010, when their argument became increasingly heated as to how he was going to pay their household bills.
To make matters worse, Lew was working two waitress jobs trying to make ends meet, while her husband had left his job as a Chinese restaurant chef two months earlier in April, and had since saddled the couple with gambling debts amounting to $20,000.
During their altercation, Lew called her husband a “coward,” at which point he apparently put his hands around her throat and strangled her to death.
It didn’t take long for Samuel Powshing Kung to realise the tragedy of the situation, and he said he briefly considered fleeing the scene but realised he would soon get caught.
Shortly later Kung went to the Second Street Reno Police Department station and confessed to the crime, saying to the officer in charge; “I’ve done a bad thing. I’ve killed my wife.”
When officers went to Kung’s apartment in the 2400 block of Harvard Way, they discovered Lew’s body on her bed, confirming the horrific story.
According to court records, “Mr Kung stated that he realized he had ruined his life, and that he deserves his punishment.” Kung now faces the prospect of a lifetime behind bars when Judge Patrick Flanagan of Washoe District sentences him on March 18th.
This latest gambling tragedy story once again highlights the need for greater measures to help protect gamblers from compulsive behaviour. As  Dr. Valerie Lorenz of Compulsive Gambling, Inc. said:
“We’ve really come a long way from the attitude that gambling is immoral, and in the process we’ve created a major public health problem.”