Chinese Man Indicted for Unlicensed Driving While on Suspended Sentence, Reoffending 7 Months After Saitama Hit-and-Run Conviction
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On June 24, 2026, the Saitama District Public Prosecutors Office's Koshigaya Branch indicted Deng Hongpeng (43), a Chinese national demolition worker, on charges of violating the Road Traffic Act (unlicensed driving). The Saitama Prefectural Police had found and arrested Deng on June 3 of the same year after discovering him driving without a license at a coin-operated parking lot in Misato.
Deng had previously been convicted after driving an SUV without a license in May of the prior year, striking and injuring four elementary school students on their way home and fleeing the scene, for which he received a sentence of two years and six months in prison, suspended for four years. He reportedly told the court at sentencing that he would "never drive again," but roughly seven months later he was found to have resumed driving without a license, after a tip-off from local residents. The vehicle he was driving at the time of his arrest was reportedly the same one involved in the earlier hit-and-run.
Current status: About three weeks after his re-arrest on June 3, 2026, the case progressed from arrest to indictment. Because the reoffense occurred while he was still on a suspended sentence, his prior suspended sentence could be revoked, potentially requiring him to serve that term in addition to any new sentence.
The suspended sentence system defers execution of a prison term on condition that the offender does not reoffend, and if the person is sentenced to imprisonment or a harsher penalty during the probationary period, the suspension is, as a rule, revoked. This case can be seen as a typical example of words of remorse expressed at sentencing not being matched by actual behavior, raising questions about the effectiveness of the suspended sentence system.