On 23 April 2005, Mi Gao Huang Chen (1964 – 28 April 2005), a British Chinese restaurant owner, was attacked by a large group of youths outside the Chinese takeaway he ran in Scholes, Wigan, Greater Manchester. He died of his injuries on 28 April at the age of 41. The police arrested 23 people in connection with the attack, four of whom were eventually convicted of murder.

Born in China, Chen moved to the UK several years before his death, where he became known as Michael Chen. Using a less common phonetic spelling of Michael, Mi Gao (米高), he compounded it with his first name, Gaohuang, to form Mi Gao Huang, despite some English sources falsely reporting Huang Chen as being his surname. In 2004 he and his girlfriend, Jia Ming Yan, also known as Eileen Jia, bought the Superb Hut takeaway after the previous owner had abandoned it because of the harassment they suffered. In the months before the attack, the couple reported several incidents of antisocial behaviour to the police, including racial abuse and an incident a day before Chen’s death on 22 April, where a group of youths smashed a window; Jia later said the police response to these incidents was lacking.

On the night of the attack, Chen, Jia, and their chef, surnamed Wah, wielding various tools and bottles as melee weapons, confronted a group of youths who had gathered outside the takeaway, chasing them onto a nearby housing estate. As the trio turned to leave, Chen was attacked by the youths, who had returned armed with make-shift weapons of their own, which included wooden clubs, metal pipes, a garden hoe and a spade. Chen was kicked to the floor from behind and pummelled by one of the youths as the others looked on, with several of them soon joining in while others prevented Jia and Wah from intervening. During the attack—which lasted 15 minutes, was captured on camera, and was described by the prosecution as “forceful, deliberate and plain to see”—Chen was punched, kicked, had his head stamped on, and was bludgeoned with the weapons. One of the teenagers was overheard repeatedly saying “I’ll fucking kill you” while attacking with a wooden board. The coverage shows a girl throwing a branch at Jia, and Jia’s attempts to protect Chen. Chen fell into a coma, and was taken to Hope Hospital (now Salford Royal), where he died on 28 April. The pathologist who examined the body found that it had a fractured skull, a broken jaw, and a partly crushed brain; and said the cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head.