Life on the run
August 1, 2013 - 1:04am
By: Rennie Whang
TNP PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: Ariffin Jamar
On the run from the law, Mr Tony Ong (not his real name), 53, couldn’t stop worrying about his wife and two daughters, aged 4 and 6.
He had threatened a 20-year-old student with a knife and hit him over the head with a beer bottle in November.
Afraid the victim had died, Mr Ong went home after the incident, took his passport and fled to Malaysia, returning only one and a half months later.
Fugitive life is now back in the spotlight, after a man wanted for a 2001 murder in Toa Payoh was earlier this month arrested in Malaysia and brought back to Singapore.
While in Malaysia, Mr Ong said he stayed with his wife’s relatives in Johor and Kuala Lumpur and also rented places on his own.
He spent his days walking about whichever neighbourhoods he happened to stay in, going close by for meals, or staying indoors and worrying.
He was jailed three months in April, and was released from prison last month.
He said of his time spent on the run: “It was very hard to sleep. I would get at most three or four hours a night. Other than thinking about my family, I wondered what would happen if I came back home, what life in jail and after jail would be like."
Read the full report in The New Paper on Thursday (August 1).
