Yishun rape case: Woman's screams woke neighbour up

SINGAPORE - IT WAS 5.30am when she was roused from her sleep by the sound of breaking glass and someone screaming.

It came from above her bedroom window on the 10th storey of a Yishun HDB block. Miss Amanda Wang, 20, took a peek outside and was surprised to see a pair of hands reaching out from the bathroom window a floor above her flat.

A woman was pleading for help, the Nanyang Polytechnic student told The New Paper on Wednesday while recounting the incident that occurred on Jan 11 last year.

The woman screamed from above: "Help! I've been kidnapped. Please call the police."

Miss Wang said: "I told the woman to wait while I called the police, but she kept smashing the windows as if to gain attention from the neighbours.

"I tried to calm her down, but she sounded frantic. Not knowing what else to do, I woke my parents up and told them what I had heard."

Concerned for the safety of the elderly woman who lives above their unit, Miss Wang's parents, who are in their 50s, rushed upstairs. Just as they reached the unit, the front door opened and a woman ran past them.

"When my parents got to the unit, they saw bloodstains in the flat," Miss Wang said. Thinking it was a lover's tiff, her parents returned to their flat.

"After my parents came home, I looked out of the window again to see if the woman was downstairs.

True enough, she was at the carpark waiting for the police," she said. "It was only a month later that I learnt from neighbours that someone had been raped in the flat."

When TNP went to the flat where the rape was committed, a maid answered the door.

She said the flat belonged to the grandmother of Mr George Tan, the rapist Lim Jia Yi's friend, and that he was not home as he was staying with his girlfriend.

Before TNP could ask her about the incident, the maid, who declined to be named, went inside the flat.

zothman@sph.com.sg

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