SINGAPORE: The doctor was seeing his first patient for Monday (Oct 5) evening when a staff member burst into his office to say there was someone bleeding in the clinic.
It was around 6pm when Joel Lee from The Local Doctor Clinic at 61 Telok Blangah Heights stepped outside his office. He saw a bleeding man aided by two others, who said the man had been stabbed.
The injured 53-year-old man, who was bleeding from his left shoulder, told Lee to help someone else instead.
He said a 73-year-old man had also been stabbed and was at a nearby coffee shop in a worse condition.
Lee told him to put pressure on the wound and rushed to the coffee shop.
The senior was bleeding from his chest, and Lee tried to stop the blood flow. He tried to keep the victim awake by talking to him.
Paramedics from the Singapore Civil Defence Force arrived and rushed the man to the Singapore General Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
The police said a 32-year-old man later called the police to surrender, and was arrested. He will be charged with murder on Oct 7.
On Oct 6, Lee, 34, told The Straits Times in his office that the older man had been bleeding profusely.
He said: “By the time I got there... there was somebody holding his chest, and his hands had already slumped.”
On Oct 5, the police said a 73-year-old man was found lying motionless, and a 53-year-old man was injured at the ground floor of the block.
Said Lee: “He (the elderly man) was just trying to tell me he was in distress. When the ambulance arrived, I signalled to the paramedics that he needed to lie down.”
Lee said in any stabbing situation, the priority is to establish if the patient was stabbed in a vital area such as a main artery or lung, and to stop the bleeding.
He said the man received cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the ambulance, but still succumbed to his injuries.
Harvinder Singh, a Telok Blangah Heights resident for 48 years, was having his evening beer three tables away from where the older man was being treated by Lee.
The victim was a familiar face at the coffee shop and often ate there in the evening with his family, Singh said.
Singh, 66, added: “I heard shouting coming from the letterbox area of Block 57. The man then came closer to a small grass patch opposite the coffee shop, shouting, ‘Help, help... call police!’
“He was running towards the coffee shop. We were all stunned and did not know what to do until he came closer, and we saw he was bleeding from the right side of his chest.”
There were about 15 patrons at the coffee shop. One of them called the police.
At block 57, ST found blood droplets several metres from the letterbox area.
On Oct 6, Telok Blangah MP Rachel Ong said in a Facebook post that she was heartbroken by the incident. She had met the family of the dead man on the night of the incident.
Ong said: “I urge everyone not to speculate or share unverified information, whether online or in conversation. Out of respect for the family, please also refrain from sharing names, photos or any details that may identify them. Please allow the police to investigate and the legal process to take its course.”
The police said the suspect is believed to have acted alone, and there is no evidence to suggest it was a religiously motivated attack or an act of terror.
The offence of murder carries the death penalty. - The Straits Times/ANN
