‘Take a deep breath, calm down’: Angry Singapore mum jailed for assaulting police officer, stranger and 11-year-old

SINGAPORE, Aug 8 — A 35-year-old woman was sentenced to eight months and 15 weeks’ jail yesterday for assaulting several people, including a stranger, a police officer and an 11-year-old who had hurt her daughter.

She also sent several vulgar messages by phone to a child protection officer. In one message, she threatened to kill the officer if her children were not returned to her.

She pleaded guilty to a charge of voluntarily causing hurt to a public servant, two of voluntarily causing hurt and one of harassing a public servant. Another six similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.

In total, she is to serve a jail term of nearly a year.

The woman appeared in court yesterday smiling, occasionally glancing towards her fiance and mother.

She and a co-accused person cannot be named because it could lead to the identification of her child and the victim involved in her case. The Children and Young Persons Act restricts the publication and broadcast of any information relating to court proceedings involving children and young people.

As District Judge Eugene Teo meted out the sentence, he told the woman that she needed to manage her anger better.

“The whole point of this exercise is to let you know — and I think you recognise this — that you are not the best version of yourself when you are acting in anger,” he said.

Assaults

Court documents showed that the assaults took place on different occasions between 2020 and 2022.

The first victim is a 51-year-old man. On October 19, 2020 at around 11.55pm, he was having a meal at ABC Bistro in Geylang while the woman and her co-accused sat nearby.

For reasons not stated, a dispute ensued and the co-accused pulled the victim from his seat and dragged him onto the middle of the road next to the restaurant.

The co-accused then punched the victim in the face, causing him to fall. As he laid on the road, the woman punched and stepped on the victim’s face several times.

She stopped only when the co-accused pulled her away from the victim, who ended up with several facial fractures.

Another victim was a student. On June 19 in 2022, the woman’s daughter got into a fight with a schoolmate, who was aged 11 at the time.

In their scuffle, the woman’s daughter sustained a scratch.

When the woman saw her daughter’s face later and noticed the scratch, she confronted the schoolmate at a void deck of a public housing block and scolded her.

The woman then slapped the daughter’s schoolmate across her face, leaving a 1cm cut on her lip. As the girl cried, she continued berating the child.

Swearing, hitting officers

The woman’s abusive behaviour did not end there.

On July 15 in 2022, her children were referred to Child Protection Service due to concerns over their safety and well-being.

A few days later, a child protection officer called the woman to arrange an interview.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Phoebe Tan said: “The accused demanded for her children to be sent home and threatened that she would make ‘big hooha’ if her demands were not complied with before abruptly ending the phone call.”

The officer texted the woman on the phone thereafter and asked her to refrain from using vulgarities.

However, the woman began sending several vulgar messages to the officer at about 9.40pm on the same day, with threats to “kill anyone who try to take” her children away from her.

Two days after that, the officer informed the woman that the Child Protection Service would move her children to temporary placement homes that same day.

In response, the woman sent several vulgar and threatening messages again. This prompted the officer’s manager to file a police report.

Two months later on Oct ober11 in 2022, the woman was in a lock-up at the Police Cantonment Complex. Court documents did not state why she was arrested, but that a female police officer was deployed to escort her.

As she expressed her unhappiness at being arrested, the police officer and her partner tried to calm the woman down.

Instead of sitting down and controlling her emotions, she began to shout vulgarities at the officers, before kneeing one of them in the crotch.

Besides this, she also sent several threatening messages to her child’s teacher and cursed another child protection officer. These were taken into consideration during sentencing.

‘Calm down’

DPP Tan asked for a jail term of between 11 months and four weeks’ and 12 months and five weeks’ jail.

On behalf of the woman, Derek Kang from law firm Cairnhill Law LLC pleaded for leniency, noting that she has four children and is now pregnant.

He also called for a seven-month jail term for the 2020 assault, because the co-accused — who was sentenced to eight months’ jail — has a history of rash act causing grievous hurt.

District Judge Teo addressed the woman, asking her to better manage her anger.

“After you complete your sentence, when you feel those emotions coming out, you should take a deep breath and calm down. Because if you come back again (to court), your sentence will be much higher,” he said.

For using indecent, threatening, abusive or insulting words towards a public servant, the woman could have been jailed for up to 12 months or fined up to S$5,000 (RM16,855), or both.

For voluntarily causing hurt to a public servant, she could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined or caned.

For voluntarily causing hurt, she could have been jailed for up to five years or fined up to S$10,000, or both. — TODAY