Man filmed shoving elderly woman off public bus
By Qiuyi Tan | Posted: 07 June 2012 2115 hrs
SINGAPORE: A man was caught on camera shoving an elderly woman off a bus, an incident police have classified as "voluntarily causing hurt".
Authorities told Channel NewsAsia that the 25-year-old has also been hauled in for questioning.
He shouted, threatened to hit her, and finally shoved the elderly woman off the bus.
Other passengers immediately responded - including Ms Tina Chang.
"It was not a light push, it was really hard! Had she not grabbed hold of the handle (on the door) when she fell, she would have flown off," she said.
The incident apparently started when the elderly woman pressed the bell late, resulting in the bus stopping past the bus stop.
"He started shouting at her first, and then he approached her, and threatened to slap her. She was quite shocked, (and) she was shaking," said Ms Chang.
The man, identified as Alex Ong, said on his Facebook page that he suffers from clinical depression.
Associate Professor Munidasa Winslow, senior consultant at Winslow Clinic, said: "Having a condition, having obsessive compulsive disorder or Asperger's or whatever else, is not a carte blanche credit for you to be able to misbehave or do whatever you want to.
"You still have to live by society's norms. If you find you have problems with that, then it's incumbent on you to go and seek help."
On his blog, Alex Ong said what happened was the result of anger simmering inside him - at the difficulty of finding a good job, and even at the recent fatal crash involving a Ferrari and a taxi.
Mental conditions are not necessarily increasing in Singapore, Dr Winslow said, but they are showing up more often with the help of social media and the Internet.
It may also be the impact of social change on the younger generation.
"(For) the early generations in Singapore, when we went to school the prevailing sentiment was that life is difficult," said Dr Winslow.
"But in later generations, some people at least, seem to go in with the feeling that life is supposed to be easy, and why is it that everybody is making life difficult for me?"
It's unclear whether Ong will be charged, as police continue their investigations.
- CNA/cc
