Storeman jailed 3 months for hitting foreign student's head with beer bottle
Published on Apr 19, 2013
By Khushwant Singh
Three Myanmar students were having supper at a coffeeshop in Jalan Membina off Tiong Bahru Road at 3am on Nov 22 last year, when storeman Kok Seng Kee came up behind one of them and bashed his head with an empty beer bottle.
Mr Thet Htet Nyan, 20, threw up his hands to cover his bleeding head while his two friends ran away in fear. A passer-by called police and the victim was taken to Singapore General Hospital for treatment of a 4cm-long cut. He was discharged the next day.
Koh, 53, who lives in a flat above the coffeeshop, went home for his passport, and fled to Malaysia that very morning. However, he returned on Jan 4 this year after he found out that the victim was not seriously hurt and had recovered.
On Friday, he pleaded guilty to causing hurt to the Myanmar national and was sentenced to three months in jail.
Pleading for a lenient sentence, defence counsel Choo Si Sen said that Koh had been previously assaulted by the trio previously and wanted to exact his revenge although outnumbered.
The court allowed the storeman to start serving his jail sentence next Friday as he wanted a week's adjournment to settle schooling matters for his two young children. His bail was increased to $20,000.
