Judge delays ex-SIA stewardess’ sentencing

A HIGH Court judge has postponed sentencing former Singapore Airlines stewardess Constance Chee for causing the death of Sindee Neo.  

Justice V.K. Rajah wants to give her lawyer time to find out if she has family support after her release from prison. 

He said this was an unexpected but necessary turn of events, and added he was very reluctant to pass an “indeterminate” duration in sentencing unless he had no alternative. 

The judge expressed his concern after consultant forensic psychiatrist Stephen Phang told the court yesterday that Chee would need long-term and possibly permanent treatment. 

Chee is appealing against her conviction for abducting and causing the death of Sindee in October 2004. The four-year-old girl fell from an upper floor of her Telok Blangah Crescent block. 

In convicting the 37-year-old of kidnap and culpable homicide in January, Justice Rajah agreed with a psychiatrist’s report that found her to be suffering from simple schizophrenia. 

But he also laid some of the blame for the girl’s death on Sindee’s father and Chee’s former lover, 34-year-old ex-karung guni man Neo Eng Tong. 

The court had heard that Chee entered Neo’s second-storey flat and took the four-year-old from her bed. Sindee’s mother, Kittiduangrat Ketkanok, was the first to discover her missing, but as she and her husband were looking for her, they saw Sindee “crash through the shelter cover... and then falling onto the ground.” – The Straits Times / Asia News Network