Woman arrested for attempted suicide after 2 1/2 hour standoff
By Chelsea Lim
The New Paper
Monday, Jun 04, 2012
She had been in a deep sleep when loud banging on her front door woke her up at 7am on Thursday.
The housewife in her 60s was shocked to see two Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officers outside her fifth-storey flat.
They wanted her to let them into her flat.
Thinking they were there to put out a fire, she quickly opened the door.
Then she learnt that a 49-year-old woman in the unit above had holed herself up in a room with a pair of scissors and was in a stand-off with the authorities.
The housewife, who wanted to be known only as Mrs Tan, said the officers asked to use the window in her bedroom to secure a rescue net.
Mrs Tan said in Mandarin: "I was so nervous and scared. What if the woman really jumped?
"They (the officers) asked to break one of my windows to secure the net. Eventually, they managed to do it without breaking the window."
An SCDF spokesman said later that it had received a call at 6.55am about the woman in a sixth-storey flat at Block 537, Hougang Street 52.
Two fire engines, two support vehicles and one ambulance were sent. A life pack and a rescue net were also deployed.
The woman in the stand-off was identified only as Mrs Loo.
When The New Paper arrived at the scene, there were more than a dozen police and SCDF officers in the living room of the flat, which belongs to Mrs Loo's sister and brother-in-law.
Crowd
A small crowd had gathered in the playground beside the block, looking and pointing at the window on the sixth storey.
Some residents who were hurrying to work stopped to join the crowd, and the tension was palpable as SCDF officers deployed the life pack and laid out the rescue net.
"We wondered if the woman would jump," a housewife told this reporter.
She was on her way to the market with a group of friends, but decided to stay at the void deck to see what happened next.
Mrs Loo's husband, a 52-year-old Malaysian, said his wife, who suffers from mental illness, "started blabbering nonsense" and "acted up" at midnight on Thursday.
He brushed it off as another one of her episodes. But she would not stop talking and he spent the next few hours trying to calm her.
The trouble began at 5am when Mrs Loo went to the toilet.
She then took a pair of scissors and locked herself in an unoccupied bedroom.
A commotion ensued, waking neighbours in the block, including Mrs Tan.
After an hour trying to persuade her to come out, Mr Loo called the police.
Mrs Loo's brother-in-law, Mr Yeo Mui Kwang, 56, had gone to a coffee shop nearby when his wife called him to return.
He then spent the next two hours outside the locked bedroom trying to convince Mrs Loo to come out.
At about 9.20am, almost 21/2 hours after the stand-off started, screams were heard from the flat, followed by loud banging.
Police officers had broken down the bedroom door.
A minute later, Mrs Loo emerged, escorted by officers from the police's Special Operations Command. She appeared distraught and kept saying in Mandarin she was "in pain" and that the "pain was everywhere".
A police spokesman said the woman was arrested for attempted suicide.
Mr Loo said his wife is unemployed. The couple have no children and live in Malaysia.
Mr Loo would only say that he works on Jurong Island and travels here every day, bringing his wife along at times. He declined to say more about his job.
He had brought her here on Wednesday night to get medical treatment at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) the next day.
IMH is less than a 10-minute drive from her sister's home.
But Mrs Loo's meltdown occurred before the couple could make the trip.
SCDF said the woman had no visible injuries and was not sent to a hospital.
On April 13, a man attempting suicide jumped from the window of his ninth-storey flat at Block 852, Woodlands Street 83.
He was saved by a rescue net set up by SCDF officers and was later arrested for attempted suicide.
HELPLINES
Samaritans of Singapore (SOS): 1800-2214444
Singapore Association for Mental Health: 1800-2837019
Sage Counselling Centre: 1800-5555555
Care Corner Mandarin Counselling: 1800-3535800
This article was first published in The New Paper.
