THE sight shocked them - a woman sitting on the ground with blood streaming down her neck from her head.

Second-year nursing students Eriyana Subadi, 25, and Seri Rahayu, 19, were passing through Ang Mo Kio Avenue 8 on their motorbikes just before 2pm yesterday when they saw the woman sitting at the foot of Block504.

Miss Seri Rahayu said: 'We thought she had been hit by killer litter, so we decided to stop and help.'

They had just parked their motorbikes when they had a second shock - they saw a teenage boy running with a chopper in his left hand.

Miss Seri Rahayu recounted: 'He ran up to the woman and put down the chopper. Then he ran up to us and asked us to call the police.

'He was in a panic and asked us to help his mother.

'When we saw her wounds, we realised she had not been injured by killer litter.

'She was bleeding profusely from a gash on the back of her head, and her right hand had a wound so deep we could see her bone jutting out.'

The nursing students, who were heading home from Nanyang Polytechnic, observed that the boy's chopper was clean and did not appear to have any blood stains.

The students had stumbled onto a drama that may have involved an attack in the victims' third-storey flat.

Details were sketchy, but based on what the boy told the students, and neighbours' accounts, there was a heated quarrel after a man had gone to the flat.

What happened next is not clear, but the boy said his mother had jumped from their flat. Neighbours later saw the boy holding a chopper apparently chasing after the attacker.

The students said the teenager was in shock and did not speak much.

Miss Eriyana recalled: 'The boy seemed confused and he was not very coherent, but he said that they lived on the third storey and that his mother had jumped down.

'He also said a man who had gone to their flat had run away.'

She said they did not ask for further details as they were busy trying to apply first aid on the victims.

They told the woman to lie down, but she did not seem to understand English.

Miss Seri Rahayu said: 'We told her son, who then spoke to her in Mandarin.'

Miss Eriyana: 'We helped his mother first because her injuries seemed more severe. But when I tried to help him, he tried to stop me and told me to just help his mother.'

By then, a crowd of about 10 people had gathered and some neighbours threw down a few towels from upstairs.

The students' nursing knowledge came to good use as they applied pressure to the woman's wounds and used the towels to tie tourniquets on the hands of both victims to stem the bleeding.

The police said they received a call at 1.43pm about someone who had jumped at Block 504.

Officers arrived to find a Chinese woman in her 50s lying on the pavement, semi-conscious, with a 15-year-old Chinese boy standing beside her.

It is understood the victims are not Singaporean. They were taken to hospital.

A neighbour on the seventh storey, Madam Surjit Kaur, 39, had heard the incident.

The sales assistant said: 'I was in my living room when I heard the sounds of people quarrelling and doors slamming.'

Just as Madam Kaur stepped out of her flat to take a look, she heard a loud thud at the bottom of the block.

'I quickly looked downstairs and was shocked to see a woman lying on the ground. She was wearing a pair of blue shorts, and her white T-shirt was soaked with blood. But she was conscious.'

She recognised the woman as an occupant of a unit on the third storey. She said the woman seemed to be middle-aged and had shoulder-length hair.

Chasing someone

Next, she saw a teenage boy, who lives in the same flat as the woman, wielding a chopper in his left hand. He appeared to be chasing someone.

'I couldn't see who he was chasing, but I saw him running around with the chopper. Then he ran back towards the woman and put the chopper down next to her,' Madam Kaur recalled.

She said the victims live with an elderly couple and another middle-aged man in the flat.

She was not sure how they were related, but said the family did not seem local from their accents, and she frequently heard sounds of quarrelling from the flat.

'There would be shouting, and then I would hear a man crying,' she said.

The quarrels occurred two to three times a month, sometimes as late as 11pm, she added.

Mr Ronnie Glenn, 20, a national serviceman who lives on the sixth storey, said he was watching a movie when the incident occurred.

'I heard shouting, then a loud thud. I thought it was from the movie.'

He, too, saw a woman lying downstairs in a blood-soaked T-shirt. He also saw a boy holding a chopper running towards the woman and putting it down near her before sitting down.

'The chopper was in his left hand. His right hand was bleeding badly but the chopper was clean,' he said.

The police said no arrests have been made and they are investigating.

A Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) spokesman said one fire engine and five officers were deployed to the scene at 7pm to assist the police.

The SCDF officers pitched a ladder to the third-storey parapet wall to enable the police to take photographs. There were visible bloodstains on the side of the wall.

The article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 8, 2008.