HONG KONG, Oct. 7 (UPI) — A homeless woman’s death at a McDonald’s in Hong Kong has provoked new dialogue about the city’s “McRefugees.”
CCTV footage of the restaurant in Kowloon Bay showed the middle-age woman slumped over for more than seven hours before a customer approached her and notified police, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The woman was pronounced dead Saturday morning, a full day after she had first sought shelter at the fast-food franchise. From 8:39 a.m. on Oct. 2 to the morning of Oct. 3, McDonald’s staff and customers waiting for their food ignored her, even as she collapsed at her table at 1:20 a.m. Saturday.
The woman was described as being between 50 and 60 years old, and Mashable reported she was thin and donned a gray long-sleeved jacket and slippers. Some people presumed she was asleep when she did not move for seven hours. Police said they have yet to confirm the woman’s identity, but no foul play is suspected.
Homeless people frequently take temporary residence at McDonald’s because restaurant policy in Hong Kong bans staff from pushing them out of the city’s 235 locations. In the absence of public facilities, Hong Kong’s homeless spend their nights at the restaurants, which are open 24 hours daily.
McDonald’s Hong Kong said in a statement staff was following policy when they did not “disturb” the unconscious woman, and that a “thorough disinfection” has been completed.
“The whole thing is shocking,” said Paul O’Connor, a visiting sociology professor at Lingnan University. “It’s really caught people’s attention locally — it’s one of those tragic yet mundane things that occur.”
According to Hong Kong statistics from 2013, almost 20 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and a 2015 report from financial services firm UBS noted Hong Kong residents earn lower incomes than people in New York or Paris, while being burdened with similar rents.
Hong Kong’s high cost of living has been blamed for a rise in the city’s homeless population.
