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SINGAPORE: A man suffering from a delusional disorder thought his upstairs neighbour was attacking him and started a fire with charcoal in his own flat.<\/p>\n
The fire spread, leading to the evacuation of residents and at least two firefighters being taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.<\/p>\n
Liu Zheyuan, a 44-year-old Singaporean, pleaded guilty on Monday (Jun 22) to rashly causing a fire in a flat along Joo Seng Road.<\/p>\n
The court heard that Liu was suffering from a delusional disorder and believed that his upstairs neighbour had intentionally shot laser beams and sent strong currents through his ceiling to disturb him over the previous two years.<\/p>\n
On May 4 this year, Liu thought he was facing another such attack from his neighbour that was causing pain in his head and ears.<\/p>\n
This led him to burn charcoal in an attempt to ward off the attack.<\/p>\n
He placed two pieces of charcoal and fire starters in a stainless steel pot and lit the charcoal.<\/p>\n
He then placed the pot on a metal rack near the open window in the living room and added more charcoal.<\/p>\n
The fire grew larger and set a plastic curtain ablaze before spreading to the whole unit.<\/p>\n
Panicking, Liu tried to put out the fire but could not.<\/p>\n
He called the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) for help and ran to inform his neighbours to evacuate.<\/p>\n
Two SCDF officers who helped extinguish the fire were taken to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation and were discharged a day later.<\/p>\n
The Housing and Development Board said the fire had damaged the common area, estimating that repairs would cost about S$80,000 (US$61,896) to S$100,000.<\/p>\n
Liu was remanded at the Institute of Mental Health where it was assessed that he was suffering from a delusional disorder at the time.<\/p>\n
This was on the basis of his reports of somatic and persecutory ideas towards his neighbour over the previous two years.<\/p>\n
The ideas that his neighbour shot laser beams and sent currents through his ceiling were “fixed, false beliefs” and his parents who lived with him confirmed they were not true.<\/p>\n
Liu’s condition was assessed to be moderate in severity, given his fixation and the distress he experienced from the perceived disturbances.<\/p>\n
A minor contributory link was found between his psychiatric condition and the offence, but Liu was not of unsound mind at the time.<\/p>\n
The court called for a report assessing Liu’s suitability for a mandatory treatment order and adjourned sentencing to July.<\/p>\n
For rashly causing a fire, he could be jailed for up to a year, fined up to S$5,000, or both.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE: A man suffering from a delusional disorder thought his upstairs neighbour was attacking him and started a fire with charcoal in his own flat….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--XgHV5U8q--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/05\/05\/joo_seng_road_fire.png?itok=r3NEjgPk","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25200,25199,6064,202,25183,184,6997,140,4055,2335],"class_list":["post-62797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-attacking","tag-delusion","tag-due","tag-fire","tag-firemen","tag-hospital","tag-landing","tag-man","tag-neighbour","tag-started","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}