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A judge has described a woman’s simmering anger over her eviction from a shared residence as having “bubbled and festered” for months.
This unresolved resentment led Tsai-Wei Hung to set fire to her former landlord’s home entrance, while seven individuals, including children and an elderly woman, were inside.
Before igniting the flames, Hung, labeled as the “housemate from hell” by those affected, reportedly shouted “Go to hell” in Mandarin.
Today, the 33-year-old was sentenced to a maximum of six years and two months in Melbourne’s County Court, following her guilty plea to charges of arson, extortion, and endangering lives.
Judge Carolene Gwynn characterized Hung’s actions as an “extraordinary, volatile, and frankly dangerous” response to being evicted and asked to vacate her previous living situation.
“Not only was your animosity towards your victims clearly ongoing, but your wrath seemed to bubble and fester,” she told Hung.
“You pursued a terrifying vendetta, affecting numerous victims, in a premeditated course of conduct, involving arson, dangerous driving, criminal damage, extortion and of course the charges relating to your reckless conduct.”
Hung became emotional during the sentence and it had to be briefly adjourned to allow her time to calm down.
Her three-month tirade began the day she was evicted, on March 11, 2024, when she hurled eggs at a garage door.
Hung then accelerated towards her former housemate Chung-Ting Tuan and landlord Lin Zhang at speed, stopping sharply one metre away from them.
She drove into the garage roller door, damaging it and three vehicles parked inside, fleeing before police arrived.
Hung returned the next day and damaged the vehicles inside the garage further, then went to police and claimed “she just wanted to scare them”.
Three months later, on June 10, she returned to her former Clyde North home and set the front door on fire before setting two cars alight.
She tried to extort her victims by demanding her landlord pay her $30,000, and warning Zhang and his family “be careful or they will have the same experience as me, or even lose more than that”.
His Clyde North tenants were afraid and arranged to stay with Zhang and his family on June 11.
There were seven people at Zhang’s Berwick home – including his two kids and their grandmother – when Hung visited early on June 12.
She poured accelerant outside the front entry to the home and used matches to set it alight. Luckily no one was injured and the fire went out itself on the concrete.
Gwynn said she was concerned about Hung’s actions and reactions in the three-month period, combined with her limited remorse.
“Your capacity to deal with conflict and or stress in the future is unknown,” she said, as she sentenced Hung.
Hung has already served one year and seven months of her sentence, and will have to spend four years behind bars before she is eligible for parole.