According to The New Paper report today (Mar 22), the wife, 40, told reporters that her 45-year-old jobless husband had been speaking incoherently since the night before, and that he was stressed out because he had to go to court to face a charge the next day. Her husband has been in and out of jail for drug offences and petty crime.
The frightened woman then called her mother, and before long, about 20 police officers arrived at the fourth-storey flat at about 7.45am.
When he saw the police officers, the man got more aggressive.
Through a phonecall, the police instructed her to take her kids into another bedroom and lock themselves in there.
SCDF officers helped the wife, her three children and three tenants (two Bangladeshis and an Iranian student) escape on ladders placed at the front and rear bedrooms.
Five hours into the standoff, police eventually decided to cut the metal front gate of the unit to arrest the man, after he refused to give up.
The wife told The New Paper that her husband of 16 years, who used to be a loving husband and doting father, had changed for the worse after he quit his job at the Turf Club.
The wife has since become the sole breadwinner of the family.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
Police had earlier received a distress call at about 7.35am at the fourth floor of Block 706 Clementi West Street 2. Six people were held captive in a flat by a parang-wielding man. When they rushed to the scene, they found the front gate of the four-room flat locked.
The police then instructed the man's wife and her three children - aged 14, 11 and three - to lock themselves in the master bedroom. The three tenants - believed to be foreign university students - did so as well in the other bedrooms.
Police said the man, in his mid-40s, had refused to let the group leave the flat.
While the police were negotiating with the man, SCDF conducted the rescue which took about four hours. Six of the captives via ladders perched on the windows of their bedrooms, while the seventh, a three-year-old, was strapped to the chest of a Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officer as he repelled down to the ground.
Police officers then forced their way into the flat and arrested the man at about 12.30pm.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
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