Onlookers just stood and stared

Onlookers just stood and stared

As the elderly woman lay unconscious in the Toa Payoh lift, it went up from the first storey to the eighth, and back down again.

The five or so people who were at the lift lobby appeared to be just staring helplessly at the sight.

Madam Menaga A. Rawichandran, 23, who was returning home at 6.20pm, asked if anyone had called the authorities, but no one replied.

Frustrated, the housewife asked her husband to dial 995 - the Singapore Civil Defence Force hotline.

"The people around couldn't even be bothered to call," she claimed.

Madam Menaga had just got out of a taxi after spending the day with her family at Safra Toa Payoh when they came across a crowd at the lift lobby of Block 105, Lorong 1 Toa Payoh, on Tuesday.

She was with her husband, Mr Gandhi, 27, and their two children - a three year- old girl and a three-month-old boy- and her brother.

"My husband tried calling out to the woman to see if she would respond but she didn't," she said.

"I felt great pity for her. No one was holding the lift door open, so it closed and went to the eighth storey."

It then came down to the first storey again, but this time, Madam Menaga's brother, who wanted to be known only as Mr Vicky, 25, held the door open until the authorities arrived.

An SCDF spokesman said it was alerted at 6.21pm and an ambulance was despatched.

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Shin Min Daily News reported that a neighbour had seen the woman, which the paper identified as Madam Kuang Shi Ting, 81, coming out of her flat at 6.10pm.

NOTHING UNUSUAL

The neighbour did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

The woman, who had been living there for 23 years, is believed to have fainted in the lift before she died.

Mr Ho Eng Hok, 43, one of the residents in the block, said the woman did not mix around with other residents.

"She's very old, her hands trembled whenever she walked," said the crane operator.

The New Paper understands that the woman was living alone in her fifth-storey flat and was not suffering from any illnesses before her death.

The police said they are still investigating the unnatural death.


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