SINGAPORE, April 13 — Furious that an auxiliary police officer stopped his car when he was already running late, a man tried to get on his way by inching his car repeatedly towards the officer, alarming him.
Mohd Shahrir Johari pleaded guilty today to one charge of acting rashly or negligently, which could endanger someone’s life or personal safety.
Senior District Judge Bala Reddy sentenced Shahrir to four weeks’ jail and disqualified him from driving for 12 months.
The 36-year-old Malaysian was a driver providing limousine services to fetch individuals between Singapore and Malaysia.
He was running late to pick up passengers and was driving towards Woodlands Checkpoint, where the incident happened.
The victim was a traffic controller responsible for maintaining the orderliness of traffic towards the checkpoint.
This included directing all cars trying to cut the queue in the car lane from the bus lane, to make a U-turn back towards Malaysia.
What happened
On March 23, at about 7am, Shahrir drove his car towards Woodlands Checkpoint via the bus lane.
The victim, auxiliary police officer Muhammad Noralif Amir Hamzah, noticed that Shahrir was trying to filter left into the car lane from the bus lane.
He was also cutting into the queue of cars in the car lane.
Officer Noralif and his partner immediately signalled to Shahrir to make a U-turn, but he ignored them and continued to cut queue.
Noralif then stood in front of his car to stop him from filtering into the car lane, while his partner directed him to make a U-turn.
Though he was aware that the officer was standing in front of his car, Shahrir still insisted on filtering into the car lane because he was running late to pick up his passengers in Singapore.
He kept inching his car forward repeatedly toward the officer standing in front of his vehicle until it came into contact with the officer’s leg.
This was even after the officer’s partner had hit the car bonnet with his hand and shouted at him to stop.
Alarmed that Shahrir still did not stop, the partner reached his hand through the window of Shahrir’s car and managed to turn off the car’s engine.
Shahrir began to argue with the officer and switched the engine back on, before inching his car forward repeatedly again.
This caused Noralif, who was still standing in front of his car and placing his hand on its bonnet, to take several steps back to avoid being hit.
He then communicated the incident to his superiors, before allowing Shahrir to drive ahead to Woodlands Checkpoint.
Several immigration officers then stopped his car from proceeding and called the police to complain about the incident at about 8.45am.
Noralif did not suffer any injuries from the incident.
In court, Deputy Public Prosecutor Louis Ngia sought between four and six weeks’ jail and a ban from driving for 12 months, while defence counsel Sunil Sudheesan sought four weeks’ jail for his client.
In his mitigation plea, Mr Sunil said that Shahrir was going at slow speed at all material times, that the officer could have easily avoided him or moved away.
Senior District Judge Bala Reddy interjected his plea, saying that the officer stood in front of his car to stop it from moving.
He added that whether the officer could move away was “not the point”, but the fact that Shahrir could have caused harm, which is “very aggravating”.
The judgement was delivered to Shahrir through a Malay interpreter, to which he responded tearfully in broken English that he “respects Singapore law”.
Anyone convicted of acting rashly or negligently such that they endanger someone’s life or personal safety can be jailed up to six months or fined up to S$2,500, or both. — TODAY
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said the offender was sentenced to four months’ jail. This is incorrect. His jail term was four weeks. We are sorry for the error.
