A FORTY-YEAR-OLD mother of three was on her way home from work the afternoon Mas Selamat Kastari escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre when she spotted a limping man along Thomson Road.

She was on Mount Pleasant Road, a short distance from the detention centre, when she saw him approach a stranger.

Although she saw him on Feb 27, it was not until three days later that she realised he might have been the fugitive Jemaah Islamiah leader.

This is what she told YEO GHIM LAY and CHONG CHEE KIN:

'I had just finished my work that day and was heading back to my home in Bishan. I work in Stevens Road and usually knock off at about 4.30pm to 4.45pm.

I was at Mount Pleasant Road and waiting to turn into Thomson Road when I had to stop at the junction. That was about 5pm.

I saw a Malay man on the other side of Thomson Road, walking on the pavement against the flow of traffic on that side.

He was walking towards the bus-stop in front of the St Joseph's Institution (SJI) International school.

He had a limp in his left leg. He was dressed in some sort of brown or beige outfit which looked like a T-shirt. He was a little on the plump side, but not fat, and wasn't very tall. He looked very similar to the description they released later of Mas Selamat.

He didn't look well dressed - he was very scruffy, like a vagrant.

There was a Chinese woman dressed all in white walking on the pavement towards him and she was talking on her mobile phone.

When they came towards each other, he held out his hand, looking like he was asking for money, but she ignored him.

I stayed to watch because I was worried he might do something to the woman.

But then he started crossing the road. There wasn't a pedestrian crossing, and he put up his hand to ask the approaching motorists to let him pass.

He stopped at the middle of the road, where there was a barricade. He was facing me then, and I could see his face from the front.

He looked very disoriented, very dishevelled, like he was in a daze. He didn't look like he knew where he was going, or like he was looking for someone.

All this took a few minutes and I had to move off because there was a car behind me.

I'm not sure where the man went after that.

It didn't occur to me at the time that this could have been the terrorist who escaped, because the news didn't come out until that evening.

I only realised that he might have been Mas Selamat on Saturday morning, when I read in The Straits Times about a similar possible sighting near the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped in Toa Payoh Rise, just down the road from where I had been.

There was a side profile picture in the papers, and it looked like him. He wasn't clean shaven, had a beard, and looked scruffy.

I called the police. That afternoon an investigating officer met me and took me to the place. I showed the officer where I saw the man.

If the man I saw was Mas Selamat, it didn't look like it was a planned escape. He didn't look like he was waiting for someone to pick him up.'