MS Unsolved: What happened to the alleged armed robber whose gun misfired in 1994
MS Unsolved is a series that hopes to raise awareness of cold cases in Singapore and generate new leads. If you have any information on the cases, reach out to MS News or the police.
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It was a warm Monday morning in Holland Village.
At about 9.30am on 15th August 1994, 34-year-old sub-contractor Koh Lai Teck was preparing to drive away from a carpark behind Block 12, Holland Avenue.
He probably expected an ordinary morning.
What happened next unfolded in a matter of seconds.
A motorcyclist pulled up beside Koh’s Mercedes-Benz car, pointed a handgun at his head and ordered him not to move.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
The gun had misfired.
Mr Koh, pictured at the scene. Source: NewspaperSG
A victim fights back
This gave Koh the chance to react. He flung open his car door, knocking the gunman and his motorcycle to the ground. Koh got out of the car and wrestled with the attacker over the weapon.
He then made a move that almost cost him his life.
“I know it was very risky, but at that time, all I could think of was grabbing his gun,” he told The Straits Times (ST).
As the two grappled, the gunman struck Koh twice on the head and once on the chest with the gun. He eventually broke free and fled towards Lorong Liput, abandoning his motorcycle.
Source: NewspaperSG
By the time police arrived, the gunman had vanished, but he had left behind several clues. Namely, his Malaysian-registered motorcycle, two live bullets and, later, a grey jacket found on a fence nearby.
What followed was a major manhunt through Holland Village: more than 50 officers, including Special Operations Command troopers in bulletproof vests carrying assault rifles, combed the area for over an hour.
They conducted house-to-house searches as residents and shoppers gathered behind the police cordon. Despite the scale of the operation, the gunman was nowhere to be found.
A gunman who never got the chance to fire
At the time, police were not even certain what the gunman’s motive had been.
Koh was wearing a Rolex worth about S$6,000 at the time and had around S$100 on him. And he was driving a 10-year-old Mercedes-Benz, making robbery one possible explanation.
Yet the circumstances did not fit neatly into a typical robbery.
According to a police source quoted by The New Paper, the gunman had not asked Koh for his money or Rolex before pulling the trigger. This led investigators to consider whether the attack was actually something more sinister.
Koh himself believed the man had wanted his Rolex, saying that he could think of no other reason for the attack. He also told reporters that he did not know the gunman and had no enemies.
For his family, the incident carried an even more frightening possibility.
Koh’s wife, Madam Loy, had given birth to their baby girl on National Day that year. Koh had left home that morning intending to meet some friends before returning to pick his wife and newborn up for a check-up.
She later reflected that she had been lucky not to have been in the car with their baby that morning.
“Today was the first time I left home since I had the baby,” she told ST.
“If the man had tried to rob us while the baby and I were in the car, I would have been terrified, so in that way I suppose we were lucky.”
The gunman leaves behind more than a motorcycle
The clues left behind gave investigators something to work with. However, it was not enough to immediately identify the man.
The gunman was described as a Chinese man in his early 30s, around 1.6m tall, stout and dark. Police believed he was still armed when he escaped.
For weeks, however, that description was all investigators had publicly.
Then, in October, police released a photofit.
Source: NewspaperSG
ST reported on 1st October 1994 that the photofit showed the man wanted in connection with the apparent robbery attempt.
Eventually, investigators put a name to the face. Chan Sin Chin.
A name on Singapore’s Most Wanted list
Chan also had several aliases, including Chan Sin Chai, Ai Leong, Siau Liang and Kulai Leong.
A 1996 Straits Times report identified him as a 25-year-old Malaysian from Kulai, Johor. His last known address was reportedly in Johor, Malaysia.
Chan was now wanted for attempted use of a firearm and the alleged robbery attempt.
He was not simply another name on a police wanted list.
By September 1996, he had become one of Singapore’s Nine Most Wanted Men.
Source: NewspaperSG
That month, police put their list of wanted criminals on the Internet to reach people beyond Singapore. In particular, those in neighbouring countries who might have information about the suspects.
Chan was the most recent addition to the list.
Two years later, he was still there.
A January 1998 report on Singapore’s Most Wanted described the list as being reserved for suspects who had allegedly committed capital or otherwise very serious offences and who police believed could pose a threat to the community.
One CID officer described those on the list as the department’s “most dangerous and desperate suspects”.
Source: NewspaperSG
Chan remained among them, wanted for the arms offence dating back to 1994.
Where did Chan Sin Chin go?
The case is hard to shake precisely because of what was left behind.
The police had a victim who survived a gun attack, eyewitnesses who saw the struggle, a motorcycle abandoned at the scene, two live bullets, clothing believed to belong to the gunman and eventually a name, aliases and a last known address in Johor.
Yet the man accused of pointing a gun at Koh’s head remained at large.
The most chilling part of the case is perhaps how differently that morning could have ended.
Koh escaped a shooting because the gun misfired. He used the brief opportunity to slam his car door into the gunman and fight back.
That decision left him injured, but alive.
His attacker escaped.
More than 3 decades later, there is no clear answer as to what happened to Chan Sin Chin after he disappeared from Holland Village.
What remains is a strange trail of evidence from one August morning.
Source: NewspaperSG
Somewhere between the gun that didn’t fire and the man who vanished, one of Singapore’s longest-running wanted-person mysteries quietly took hold.
Also read: MS Unsolved: Were the 2 McDonald’s boys who ‘disappeared’ in S’pore kidnapped by a trusted adult?
MS Unsolved: Were the 2 McDonald’s boys who ‘disappeared’ in S’pore kidnapped by a trusted adult?
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Featured image adapted from NewspaperSG and NewspaperSG.
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