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A woman who became frustrated after her former colleague failed to answer the door was fined for setting fire to joss paper outside the colleague’s flat in Bukit Batok.<\/p>\n
Tong Huanling, 34, a Chinese national, pleaded guilty to one charge of causing a fire and was fined $3,000 on Monday (Nov 2).<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Tong went to her former colleague’s home at Block 293A, Bukit Batok Street 21, on the night of Jan 29 this year to look for her.<\/p>\n
However, her former colleague was overseas at the time, leaving only her husband and six-year-old daughter at home.<\/p>\n
After receiving no response despite knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, Tong waited outside the unit for about an hour.<\/p>\n
Noticing that the lights inside the unit were on but no one answered the door, Tong believed that her former colleague was deliberately avoiding her.<\/p>\n
She then retrieved a cardboard box containing joss paper from the ground floor of the HDB block and placed it near the shoe rack outside the unit’s iron gate.<\/p>\n
At around 11pm, she set the joss paper alight and took photographs of the fire, which she sent to her former colleague before knocking on the door again.<\/p>\n
When no one answered the door, Tong kicked over a wooden chair in anger, causing it to topple onto the burning cardboard box, which fuelled the fire further.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Soon after, her former colleague’s husband spotted flames and thick smoke outside the unit and immediately called the police.<\/p>\n
Police officers arrived shortly afterwards and found that two neighbours who had smelled smoke had already helped to extinguish the fire.<\/p>\n
Tong was arrested and charged in court on Jan 30. She was released on bail on Feb 10.<\/p>\n
Following the incident, Tong offered compensation and a written apology, but both were rejected by her former colleague’s husband, according to Shin Min Daily News.<\/p>\n
Photographs submitted to the court showed that the floor outside the unit was charred, with ash residue on the gate and a wooden chair badly burned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During sentencing, Tong’s lawyer reportedly pleaded for leniency, highlighting that Tong had sought psychiatric help and was diagnosed with adjustment disorder and is receiving treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The prosecution argued that despite causing only $25 in property damage, the fire posed a significant safety risk as it occurred in a residential area, reported Shin Min Daily News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The judge also noted that it was fortunate the blaze had not spread further, which could have led to more serious consequences.<\/p>\n
[[nid:735233]]<\/p>\n
xingying.koh@asiaone.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A woman who became frustrated after her former colleague failed to answer the door was fined for setting fire to joss paper outside the colleague’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97525","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=97525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/97526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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