By Koh Hui Theng

HE WAS busy packing goods in a storage room at the back of his father's shop. It was all part of his day's work at the general store.

Then the shop assistant, who wanted to be known only as Mr Zhuo, 44, heard shouts.


Surprised, he ran out of the storeroom and saw a crowd of about 30 gathered at the front of the shop in Block 293, Yishun Street 22.

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He pushed his way to the front of the crowd - and got the shock of his life.

There, sitting on the floor between the shelves of pots and pans on display, was a topless woman.

Then the woman did the unthinkable. She grabbed a cleaver from a nearby shelf and started slashing her legs.

"She just kept hacking at herself and wouldn't stop. She looked so calm that it was eerie watching her," he told The New Paper in Mandarin at the store yesterday.

There was blood all over the place, said Mr Zhuo, but the woman didn't stop.

She picked up a vegetable knife and started slashing her hands. More blood splattered. Yet no one dared to run in and stop her.

"We were just so stunned, we just stood there and watched what she was doing," said Mr Zhuo.

There was more horror to come.

Not content with slashing her hands, the woman suddenly grabbed a fruit knife, which has a 15cm-long blade, raised it in both her hands and drove it, point first, into her stomach.

She then withdrew the knife a few centimetres. Mr Zhuo thought she would stop. But the woman merely clutched the knife and stabbed it further into her stomach.

"We didn't know what to do. It was horrible," Mr Zhuo said.

The bizarre incident happened around 2.20pm on Saturday.

Though the shop has been in business for more than 20 years, Mr Zhuo said he had never seen the woman before. According to Shin Min Daily News, the 42-year-old woman had walked into the shop alone and sat on the floor between the shelves.

Without warning, she took off her T-shirt. Then she unfastened her bra, took it off, grabbed a cleaver and a few knives from the shelves and started slashing and stabbing herself.

The shop's cashier, who wanted to be known only as Ms Cai, told The New Paper she had not noticed the woman walking in.

But when she looked up, she saw the plump 1.7m-tall woman stripping off her T-shirt. Her hair was tied in a ponytail and she was facing the walkway.

Stripped

"If you had passed by then, you would have seen her taking off her clothes. When she took off her bra, I got scared and ran away," said Ms Cai.

She added the woman appeared to be shouting something. "But the shop's music was so loud that I couldn't make out what she was saying.

"All I knew was that she started stabbing herself. I don't know why she did that."

Another shop assistant, Mr Cai, 27, was in the shop at that time.He is currently away on reservist training.

He had told Shin Min: "She didn't seem to feel any pain at all...When she stabbed herself in the stomach, I told her to stop but she looked like she was possessed.

"She kept hacking at herself. So I called the police."

Mr Zhuo added: "Normally, you would feel the pain when there's a slight cut. I don't know how she could keep stabbing herself like this."

Twenty minutes after she first stabbed herself, the woman paused in her self-mutilation.

By then, her pants were covered with blood.

There was a long trail of blood stains on the shop floor. It stretched from where the pans were displayed, to the counter where there were stacks of sauce containers.

Mr Zhuo said a young man from a neighbouring shop, which sells watches and clothes, then dashed into the store.

He ran to the woman and snatched the knives away.

By this time, the police and Singapore Civil Defence Force officers had arrived at the scene.

They covered the woman with a blanket and took her to an ambulance.

As the shop didn't have much space, they had to leave by the back door.

Shin Min Daily News reported yesterday that the woman had more than 10 wounds.

There were two wounds on her neck. Most of the other injuries were on her stomach.

When The New Paper visited the shop yesterday, all evidence of the drama had been washed away.

Mr Zhuo said he and Mr Cai started cleaning up once the police left.

"We wrapped the brooms with pieces of cloth dipped in disinfectant and scrubbed the floor." It took them about 20 minutes to clean everything.

"There was just so much blood," he said, shaking his head at the memory.

Remained open after incident

The shop remained open even during the clean-up operation.

Mr Zhuo said: "At the end of the day, we're running a business, so we just have to continue.

"Thanks to us, I think the betting outlet nearby saw roaring business. It's not every day that you come across something like this, so they probably had lots more people placing numbers with them," he said.

Though unable to recall what the woman looked like, Ms Cai said she was so traumatised by the incident that she could not sleep that night.

"This kind of thing has never happened before. I was so worried that I stayed awake the whole night," she said.

Last night, The New Paper visited the woman's flat, which is in the neighbourhood, but no one answered the door. The windows were closed and the second-storey flat was dark.

Plants lined the corridor outside the corner unit, which had the Chinese character for good fortune stuck on the worn door.

A child's bicycle was parked nearby. Slippers, including a pair of pink sandals, were strewn outside.

Neighbours living on the same floor said they did not know where the woman was.

They also said they did not know the family well.

It is believed that the woman lives there with six or seven people, including a four-year-old daughter and her elderly mother.

When contacted, a police spokesman said they received a call for assistance on Saturday afternoon.

When they arrived, they found a Chinese woman injured. The woman, who was conscious, was then sent to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, the spokesman added.

She was returned to her family on the same day.

This article was first published in The New Paper.


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