Man with knife locks himself and 72-year-old mother in flat, keeps police and SCDF out for 2 hours

Tatiana Mohamad Rosli
The New Paper
Sep 3, 2019

For about two hours, a 51-year-old man kept police and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officers at bay, while he trashed his 12th-storey flat, throwing furniture around.

Armed with a knife, the man locked himself in the unit with his 72-year-old mother.

The incident happened at Block 22 Havelock Road at about 9am on Sunday.

It ended at about 11am when police officers broke into the flat and arrested the man for criminal intimidation.

The 72-year-old woman was taken to Singapore General Hospital with superficial injuries, including minor scratches, said the police.

As a precautionary measure, officers from the SCDF deployed rescue nets and two safety life air packs on the ground floor during the stand-off.

The New Paper understands that both mother and son live together in the unit.

Neighbours told TNP yesterday that they heard loud shouting and banging sounds coming from the flat. They also said that the mother and son frequently quarrelled over money issues.

Dylan Teo, 16, a student, who lives in a nearby unit on the same floor, said he was asleep when he heard the man shouting.

When he looked out of his front gate, he saw that the stretch of corridor near the man's unit had been cordoned off by the SCDF.

He said: "I saw an elderly woman in her 70s being taken away by the officers in a stretcher. The entire incident was really noisy, but I didn't get to see the man."

Another neighbour, who wanted to be known only as Madam Wong, 80, told TNP that she had been friends with the man's mother for five years.

She said the mother is divorced and works as a cleaner, while the son is unemployed.

Ms Chan Boon San, 47, a yoga instructor, was going downstairs to the coffee shop to buy breakfast for her family at about 9am when she heard the commotion.

"I heard some shouting from a man. When I went downstairs, I saw SCDF officers pumping a safety air pack. My neighbours who were gathered at the ground floor told me that a man was threatening to jump."

When TNP visited the flat at about 4pm yesterday, no one was home. Both the gate and the door were unlocked, and the flat was still in a mess, with overturned tables, chairs and a TV, strewn on the ground.

Police investigations are ongoing.