Ex-SIA stewardess gets 13 years’ jail

ONE-AND-A-HALF years after Sindee Neo’s death fall from a block of flats, her father’s former lover was sentenced to 13 years’ jail for her kidnap and causing her death. 

Former SIA lead stewardess Constance Chee Cheong Hin, 37, was found guilty of two charges. 

She received three years' jail for kidnapping and ten years for homicide. The sentences are to run consecutively. 

Chee, who appeared nervous throughout the verdict yesterday morning, broke into tears when the jail sentence was handed down to her by Justice V.K. Rajah. 

But her lawyer Subhas Anandan was overheard telling her: “Don’t cry. At least you did not get life.” 

Chee, convicted in January of causing a four-year-old girl to fall to her death, escaped the maximum term of life imprisonment. 

The court took into consideration a psychiatric report that Chee’s condition, schizophrenia, will get better with regular and adequate medication. 

When she is released from prison, she will be put in the care of her three sisters and will live with one of them. 

Chee’s sentence has been backdated to the day of her remand, Oct 8, 2004. 

The case, which riveted Singaporeans, had its beginnings in an unlikely love affair: Chee, who dropped out of university to pursue a flying career with SIA, took up with married rag-and-bone man Neo Eng Tong, 34, Sindee’s father. 

The pair later broke up, but a  

disagreement over S$40,000 (RM91,000) Neo apparently owed her continued. 

Then, on Oct 7, 2004, Chee abducted Sindee from the family home in Telok Blangah Crescent. The girl was later found lying at the bottom of the block of flats. 

She died five days later.  

On Jan 24, Chee was convicted of intentionally causing the girl to fall from an unknown floor of the block. – The Straits Times / Asia News Network