IPOH: There will be no Father’s Day celebration for the Loo family this weekend.
Not only will dad be absent but he is also paying dearly for trying to carry out his fatherly duty.
Former bus driver Loo Moy Shan was jailed for life on Thursday for robbing a 60-year-old man with a pistol four years ago.
He did it because he needed RM60,000 to pay for the tuition fees of his two daughters, who had been accepted into Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) to study chemical engineering.
“He told us he was going to find a better-paying job in Kuala Lumpur and left,” said the younger daughter, who did not want to be identified.
“If we had known my father was going to do something like that, we would have never let him go,” the emotional young woman told The Star here yesterday.
“We would have told him our education didn’t matter. We love him so much. The money doesn’t matter. We want him to come back to us.”
Loo, 57, was caught red-handed robbing Yeow Lan Soon at the Jalan Hang Kasturi/Jalan Leboh Pasar Besar traffic light junction on March 23, 2001.
The two daughters – aged a year apart – had just applied for places at UPM a few weeks earlier.
In May that year, they were offered places at the university.
However, since the incident, the two girls had given up hope of becoming chemical engineers and instead have started working to support the family.
The younger daughter explained that life had been hard for her father, who had to shoulder the responsibility of supporting four children, his wife and his 85-year-old mother.
She added that her father had also used up all his savings to pay for her mother’s hepatitis treatment, which cost RM2,000 a month for over a year, although he was earning just RM1,000 a month.
The younger daughter now works as a clerk here while her sister is a factory clerk in Singapore. Their elder brother also works in a factory here.
The siblings have still not told their youngest brother, a college student, and their grandmother about Loo.
“He is my grandmother’s only son. She would be devastated if she knew,” said the younger daughter.
Her mother, who was also present, said she had scolded her husband for doing such a stupid thing when she first heard the news.
“But I forgive him. What happened to him was unfair. He made a mistake but he has never hurt anyone in his life. He did it because he was desperate,” she said.
Lawyer Gurbachan Singh said he would file an appeal on the sentence at the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court on Monday.
“He loves his children, and they cried when they heard the sentence. He continues to live in hope.”
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