SINGAPORE: A woman who lived in an Ang Mo Kio Housing Board flat started fires in three places at her block in separate incidents, including the front gates of two neighbours living in the same building.
In one of the cases, Linda Leong Sok Koon, 54, was out on bail in April 2025 when she secured a gate with her own padlock and started a fire.
After finding out that the occupant, a 46-year-old man, had alerted the police, she pointed a knife at him and said: “You come out, and I will stab you.”
Court documents did not disclose if he suffered any injuries due to the fire.
On Feb 13, Leong was sentenced to five years and three months’ jail after she pleaded guilty to three counts of committing mischief with fire and one count of criminal intimidation.
Court documents said she committed her first crime before 7.30am on March 18, 2025, when she set fire to a towel that had been placed on the metal gate and wooden door of a flat occupied by the first victim, a 63-year-old man.
Another man was walking past the unit later that morning when he saw that the door and gate were burnt. He alerted the occupant, who lodged a police report later that afternoon.
Leong struck again two days later on March 20 that year at around 11.50pm when she set fire to a mattress at a lift lobby of the block of flats.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Zhou Yang said: “(A 66-year-old witness) was sleeping in his home, and he smelt smoke. He opened his... door, and he saw thick smoke along the common corridor.
“He traced the source of the smoke, and he saw a big fire in the lift lobby as the mattress was on fire.”
The man managed to put out the fire with pails of water from the residents of a nearby unit before firefighters and police officers arrived at the scene. By then, the fire had already badly damaged the wall, the ceiling, and the tiled floor at the common corridor.
Due to the fire, the second victim, a 20-year-old female neighbour, later complained of shortness of breath as she had inhaled smoke. An ambulance took her to the Singapore General Hospital in the wee hours of March 21, 2025. The woman was discharged against medical advice at around 2.30am that day.
Police arrested Leong on March 21, 2025, and she was released on bail later that day.
Despite this, she re-offended the following month.
Before 5.30am on April 11 that year, she went to a flat occupied by the third victim, the 46-year-old man, and used a padlock to secure the gate to the unit to prevent him from running away.
The court heard that only Leong had the keys to the padlock. The prosecutor said the man had never interacted with Leong and did not have a dispute with her before this incident.
Court documents stated that Leong also placed items including a blanket, two towels, a banana, a soft toy and a set of bedsheets outside the gate and set them ablaze.
She later banged on the door to the unit and the man, who opened it, saw that she was holding a knife. He then alerted the police after noticing that the gate had turned black due to the fire.
DPP Zhou said: “The accused then hit the unit’s metal gate using the sharp edge of the knife. The accused pointed the sharp edge of the knife at the victim, and she threatened to cause grievous hurt to (him).
“As a result of the accused’s threat, the victim was scared and he felt threatened. The knife’s blade eventually broke as the accused hit the knife’s blade against the unit’s metal gate.”
Leong was arrested at around 6.30am on April 11, 2025, and has been in remand since then. - The Straits Times/ANN
