Killer-litter suspect arrested after 2-hour stand-off

SINGAPORE - A pregnant woman had a narrow escape on Thursday night when an air cooler came crashing down and almost hit her.

A witness, Desmond Pravin, 16, said the woman and her family had just got out of their car at the carpark below Block 8 at St George's Lane, near Serangoon Road, when the incident occurred at about 8pm.

"If she didn't move in time, the air cooler would have fallen on her," the St Gabriel's Secondary School student told The New Paper.

Her husband was shocked and shouted at a man on the seventh storey who was throwing killer litter from his kitchen window.

"They started arguing, then the family left," said Desmond, who saw the incident from his flat in Block 5, whose rear faces that of Block 8.

He said the air cooler was only one of the items thrown by a man who was topless. Other items included a glass tank, pails and even a microwave oven.

He was walking home with his mother after buying food when he heard a man shouting at Block 8.

When they got home, he looked out of the kitchen window and saw the man throwing pails and water bottles out of his window. His mother called the police.

Desmond said he could hear the man shouting as he threw out a glass tank that shattered on the ground below.

The loud noise caught the attention of many residents who looked out from their windows.

"Something must have gone wrong because no one would just do something like that. He sounded very angry," the boy said.

He said when the police showed up at the block, the man threw compact discs at them.

STAND-OFF

There was a stand-off lasting more than two hours because the man locked himself in the flat and refused to let the police in, reported Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao.

TNP understands that the delay was because the police were concerned the man might jump out of the window and called in the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

SCDF said it received a call at 9.39pm and its officers set up a safety life pack and a rescue net at the block as a precautionary measure.

A couple, Mr Abdul Hamid Dollah, 70, and Madam Bibi, 67, were in their second-storey unit at Block 8 when they heard a bang.

"We also heard shouting, but we didn't know where it was coming from," said Mr Abdul Hamid.

Curious, they looked out from their kitchen window and saw police officers and firefighters.

The couple, who work as hawkers, said the net was dropped from the eighth storey to the sixth storey. SCDF officers then climbed down into the man's unit at the seventh storey.

"We've been living here for 16 years. This is the first time something like this has happened," Madam Bibi said.

Police officers then used a saw to cut through part of the metal gate of the man's flat and arrested him.

His neighbour, a 13-year-old student who declined to be named, said he had moved into the unit with a woman last Thursday.

The woman was not in the flat at the time of the incident.

About 50 onlookers gathered to watch as the handcuffed man, grinning at the crowd as he walked past, was taken away in a police car, Lianhe Wanbao reported.

A police spokesman said on Friday that they received a call at 8.42pm requesting assistance. There were no injuries and a man, 45, was arrested.

Investigations are ongoing.

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DEC 17, 2013

Two brothers, aged 10 and 11, were arrested for allegedly throwing a small speaker and a vehicle battery from their flat at Block 4, Dover Road.

The vehicle battery, which was thrown from the 14th storey, landed near a passer-by and his friends sitting at a nearby pavilion.

The group immediately went in search of the culprit and spotted the 10-year-old boy at the block's common corridor.

The police were alerted and arrested the brothers.

DEC 13, 2013

A 15-year-old teenager was arrested after the brick he is believed to have hurled from his flat at Block 1, Eunos Crescent, injured a man.

A day before his arrest, the teenager was taken for fingerprinting and DNA tests.

He was also being investigated for other links to previous killer-litter cases in the estate, which involved a dumbbell and water dispenser.

OCT 8, 2013

A rock, about the size of a man's fist, was thrown from a flat in Block 611, Woodlands Ring Road.

It cracked the skull of Khairul Azhar, a Primary 6 pupil at Woodlands Ring Primary School.

He had to undergo an operation, where doctors used titanium surgical screws to elevate the skull away from the brain.

APRIL 2013

A police report was made when someone threw bricks, which landed in the open-air carpark next to Block 222, Serangoon Avenue 4.

They smashed the windscreens of a car and a lorry. The culprit was not found.

AUG 31, 2012

A 39-year-old man was arrested for allegedly throwing a mahjong table from the common corridor outside his ninth-storey flat at Block 465, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10. He had got into an argument with a cousin and had thrown the table downstairs in a rage.

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