<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle>The undergraduate burglar
[2009] 20 Aug_ST
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE class=noprint border=0 cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=1 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD align=right></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD class=txt-label align=right><NOBR>Title:</NOBR> </TD><TD class=txt-body>The undergraduate burglar</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD class=txt-label align=right><NOBR>Source:</NOBR> </TD><TD class=txt-body>Straits Times</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD class=txt-label align=right><NOBR>Author:</NOBR> </TD><TD class=txt-body>Wong Kim Hoh, Senior Writer</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!--EndNoIndex-->
Legal News Archive
<!--lglcntbegin-->HIS hair is cropped close to his head, his bookish pair of glasses perched neatly on the bridge of his nose.
Ming Kit (not his real name) stands quietly, taking his seat only when the prison officer gestures him towards a chair. He nods his head tentatively in greeting before flashing a politely nervous smile.
When told that he looks more like a studious undergraduate than a serial cat burglar, he deadpans with a hint of irony: 'But I am an undergraduate.'
He is not lying. He was a third-year undergraduate, reading economics, when he was arrested for housebreaking in 2006. He was sentenced to 10 years and six months' imprisonment and given 12 strokes of the cane.
If the punishment seems harsh, that's because he is a repeat offender. In 1999, he was sentenced to eight years in jail for stealing cash and valuables after breaking into scores of HDB flats over a three-year period. He was released after serving five years and four months.
It is not the first time someone has told him that there is a disconnect between his clean-cut looks and his misdemeanours.
When he was in primary school, he says, a teacher asked him if he had stolen someone else's appearance. She couldn't believe that a boy who looked so pleasant and obedient could get up to so much mischief.
Ming Kit was just 10 then, but already he was regularly hauled up for fighting and stealing. On more than a few occasions, he was caught shoplifting comics, toys and stationery from shops and stores.
'At first, I did it for the thrill. I would brag to my friends about the things I got,' he candidly admits.
Pep talks and disciplinary action by his teachers did not work; neither did canings and 'thrashings' from his exasperated parents.
In a steady, measured voice, the athletic-looking 29-year-old reveals that he is the eldest of three boys. One of his brothers now works as a manager in a logistics firm; the other is in the police force. His father is a mould-maker, his mother, a housewife.
'I guess I was a bit of a delinquent. I was at the playground a lot and started mixing with the wrong company when I was just seven or eight years old,' he says. Some of his friends were members of secret societies.
'I hung around them and they would buy me soft drinks in coffee shops. They would talk about their gang fights and who bashed whom. Their lives seemed so heroic, not ordinary or mundane,' recalls Ming Kit, whose studies were affected so abysmally that he was retained a couple of years in primary school.
Not surprisingly, he himself became a member of a street gang when he was 13 years old. He began to play truant, and whiled away many afternoons playing snooker and chasing girls in places like Parkway Parade. There were also fights with rival gangs. One took place outside his school when he and four others were set upon by about 10 members of a rival gang brandishing sticks and metal rods.
Not long after, he started to break into flats to support his vices. The catalyst, he says, was a gambling debt.
Ming Kit had learnt how to gamble when he was 10 years old. He fancied himself to be pretty sharp at cards, and once won $3,000 in one night.
Lady Luck, however, did not quite fancy him when he was playing blackjack one day with 'a friend of a friend of a friend'. By the end of that session, the then-16-year-old had chalked up a debt of more than $500.
'Jialat,' he says, using the Hokkien phrase for 'deep trouble'. 'I thought to myself: Even if I worked part-time, I could only pay them back no more than $100 each month.'
He had to find a solution, and fast. That was when he decided to be a burglar. He spent one afternoon studying the block of flats in Choa Chu Kang where he lived with his family and decided it would be a cinch to enter many of the units, especially those with kitchen windows sited next to the staircase landing.
He decided to strike that night and burgled two flats by climbing in through their kitchen windows. His loot that night was a few hundred dollars, enough to stave off his debtors temporarily but not enough to settle the amount he owed.
He struck again a few nights later at the same block, starting with some units on the 12th floor before working his way down two more floors. 'I did about five or six flats that night and got more than enough to pay the debt. In fact, I got a lot extra to spend.'
He was surprised at how easy it was. 'That's why I decided to continue doing it. When you're a teenager, getting so much money so easily is almost like a drug,' he recalls.
Ming Kit decided he would earmark only HDB flats, because unlike condominiums, there were no security guards. He only chose units with kitchen windows next to the staircase landing; he had to be able to grip the edges of the landing and the window with each hand, and there had to be a ledge or some form of support for his feet 'to prevent me from being pulled by gravity'.
He adds: 'Of course the windows had to be open and the staircase landing had to face a school or a field or a highway. That way, the possibility of getting spotted was lower.'
Ming Kit struck only in the early hours of the morning, between 1.30am and 3.30am. He would attempt to break into as many units as possible in one night because he knew he wouldn't be targeting the same block again.
He explains: 'Once victims reported the break-ins to the police, everyone in the block would take precautions and lock their windows.'
At most, he would burgle only 10 flats a night. He would either ride his bicycle or take a cab on his nocturnal jaunts. 'I needed to be back home latest by 5am. Once home, I would shower, lie in bed and pretend to be asleep when my mother came to wake me up for school,' says Ming Kit, who was in Secondary 2 when he pulled off his first job.
He always kitted himself out in a dark top and shorts to avoid being spotted. He put on a cap so that cameras installed in lifts would not be able to capture his face.
And he wore slippers, not shoes, which he would take off before climbing. 'It's not for grip but for sense. If I wore shoes, I would not know how much foothold I have. I didn't use gloves too for the same reason. The sense of touch was very important,' he says.
Save for a pouch around his waist and a small torch, he carried no equipment or tools. 'I would improvise and use whatever I could find in the flat, like screwdrivers,' he says, adding that he would also avoid touching too many things in the flat.
He honed his methods too. 'When I first started, I wasted a lot of time looking through wallets and taking just the cash. It was a lot faster to take the whole thing and dump it later.'
[2009] 20 Aug_ST
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE class=noprint border=0 cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=1 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD align=right></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD class=txt-label align=right><NOBR>Title:</NOBR> </TD><TD class=txt-body>The undergraduate burglar</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD class=txt-label align=right><NOBR>Source:</NOBR> </TD><TD class=txt-body>Straits Times</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD class=txt-label align=right><NOBR>Author:</NOBR> </TD><TD class=txt-body>Wong Kim Hoh, Senior Writer</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!--EndNoIndex-->
Legal News Archive
<!--lglcntbegin-->HIS hair is cropped close to his head, his bookish pair of glasses perched neatly on the bridge of his nose.
Ming Kit (not his real name) stands quietly, taking his seat only when the prison officer gestures him towards a chair. He nods his head tentatively in greeting before flashing a politely nervous smile.
When told that he looks more like a studious undergraduate than a serial cat burglar, he deadpans with a hint of irony: 'But I am an undergraduate.'
He is not lying. He was a third-year undergraduate, reading economics, when he was arrested for housebreaking in 2006. He was sentenced to 10 years and six months' imprisonment and given 12 strokes of the cane.
If the punishment seems harsh, that's because he is a repeat offender. In 1999, he was sentenced to eight years in jail for stealing cash and valuables after breaking into scores of HDB flats over a three-year period. He was released after serving five years and four months.
It is not the first time someone has told him that there is a disconnect between his clean-cut looks and his misdemeanours.
When he was in primary school, he says, a teacher asked him if he had stolen someone else's appearance. She couldn't believe that a boy who looked so pleasant and obedient could get up to so much mischief.
Ming Kit was just 10 then, but already he was regularly hauled up for fighting and stealing. On more than a few occasions, he was caught shoplifting comics, toys and stationery from shops and stores.
'At first, I did it for the thrill. I would brag to my friends about the things I got,' he candidly admits.
Pep talks and disciplinary action by his teachers did not work; neither did canings and 'thrashings' from his exasperated parents.
In a steady, measured voice, the athletic-looking 29-year-old reveals that he is the eldest of three boys. One of his brothers now works as a manager in a logistics firm; the other is in the police force. His father is a mould-maker, his mother, a housewife.
'I guess I was a bit of a delinquent. I was at the playground a lot and started mixing with the wrong company when I was just seven or eight years old,' he says. Some of his friends were members of secret societies.
'I hung around them and they would buy me soft drinks in coffee shops. They would talk about their gang fights and who bashed whom. Their lives seemed so heroic, not ordinary or mundane,' recalls Ming Kit, whose studies were affected so abysmally that he was retained a couple of years in primary school.
Not surprisingly, he himself became a member of a street gang when he was 13 years old. He began to play truant, and whiled away many afternoons playing snooker and chasing girls in places like Parkway Parade. There were also fights with rival gangs. One took place outside his school when he and four others were set upon by about 10 members of a rival gang brandishing sticks and metal rods.
Not long after, he started to break into flats to support his vices. The catalyst, he says, was a gambling debt.
Ming Kit had learnt how to gamble when he was 10 years old. He fancied himself to be pretty sharp at cards, and once won $3,000 in one night.
Lady Luck, however, did not quite fancy him when he was playing blackjack one day with 'a friend of a friend of a friend'. By the end of that session, the then-16-year-old had chalked up a debt of more than $500.
'Jialat,' he says, using the Hokkien phrase for 'deep trouble'. 'I thought to myself: Even if I worked part-time, I could only pay them back no more than $100 each month.'
He had to find a solution, and fast. That was when he decided to be a burglar. He spent one afternoon studying the block of flats in Choa Chu Kang where he lived with his family and decided it would be a cinch to enter many of the units, especially those with kitchen windows sited next to the staircase landing.
He decided to strike that night and burgled two flats by climbing in through their kitchen windows. His loot that night was a few hundred dollars, enough to stave off his debtors temporarily but not enough to settle the amount he owed.
He struck again a few nights later at the same block, starting with some units on the 12th floor before working his way down two more floors. 'I did about five or six flats that night and got more than enough to pay the debt. In fact, I got a lot extra to spend.'
He was surprised at how easy it was. 'That's why I decided to continue doing it. When you're a teenager, getting so much money so easily is almost like a drug,' he recalls.
Ming Kit decided he would earmark only HDB flats, because unlike condominiums, there were no security guards. He only chose units with kitchen windows next to the staircase landing; he had to be able to grip the edges of the landing and the window with each hand, and there had to be a ledge or some form of support for his feet 'to prevent me from being pulled by gravity'.
He adds: 'Of course the windows had to be open and the staircase landing had to face a school or a field or a highway. That way, the possibility of getting spotted was lower.'
Ming Kit struck only in the early hours of the morning, between 1.30am and 3.30am. He would attempt to break into as many units as possible in one night because he knew he wouldn't be targeting the same block again.
He explains: 'Once victims reported the break-ins to the police, everyone in the block would take precautions and lock their windows.'
At most, he would burgle only 10 flats a night. He would either ride his bicycle or take a cab on his nocturnal jaunts. 'I needed to be back home latest by 5am. Once home, I would shower, lie in bed and pretend to be asleep when my mother came to wake me up for school,' says Ming Kit, who was in Secondary 2 when he pulled off his first job.
He always kitted himself out in a dark top and shorts to avoid being spotted. He put on a cap so that cameras installed in lifts would not be able to capture his face.
And he wore slippers, not shoes, which he would take off before climbing. 'It's not for grip but for sense. If I wore shoes, I would not know how much foothold I have. I didn't use gloves too for the same reason. The sense of touch was very important,' he says.
Save for a pouch around his waist and a small torch, he carried no equipment or tools. 'I would improvise and use whatever I could find in the flat, like screwdrivers,' he says, adding that he would also avoid touching too many things in the flat.
He honed his methods too. 'When I first started, I wasted a lot of time looking through wallets and taking just the cash. It was a lot faster to take the whole thing and dump it later.'
