| LIM CHU KANG BURNS CASE: SUICIDE
I thought she was a ghost
By Lee
Tee Jong
THE setting was eerie, like a scene out of a horror
movie.
It was night and a sea of tombstones could be seen along Lim Chu
Kang Road.
Out of the dark, a naked woman stumbled out from the Chinese
cemetery.
Madam Ang Suan Sim, 40, a businesswoman, started waving her hands
frantically and tottered towards an oncoming van.
The startled driver, Mr Ng Choon Chuan, 28, was a salesman on his
way to his fishing haunt at the Lim Chu Kang kelong. When he blinked
to take a second look, his van had overtaken the
woman.
In a phone interview with The New Paper, Mr Ng said in Mandarin:
'I was afraid. I thought I had seen a ghost.'
It was around 9pm on June 12. His van was the only vehicle on
that long stretch of road.
He was curious, so he made a U-turn. That was when Madam Ang
spread out her arms to signal him to stop.
He noticed that she had nothing on except for a collar around
her neck and bits of cloth stuck to her thigh. Seconds later, she
collapsed by the side of the road.
Mr Ng called the police. He said: 'She was facing the ground and
groaning in pain. Her skin was charred. I stood about one metre from
her as I did not know what to do.'
By then, a crowd of taxi-drivers had gathered. Then, Madam Ang
spoke.
She told Mr Ng in Hokkien to call shifu to come collect her body.
Gasping for breath, she was coherent enough to give the monk's
telephone number.
Shifu (master in Mandarin) is Venerable Guang Rong, a monk who
shared her terrace house in Telok Kurau. In June, The New Paper had
reported that in her will, she had left him her $920,000 house and
her car.
According to an investigation report, Madam Ang's body was
covered with burn marks that smelled of kerosene. Nearby was her
gold Mercedes-Benz, engine running and petrol cap off. Inside were
puddles of liquid smelling like kerosene, a disposable lighter and
seven empty kerosene bottles.
Madam Ang died two days later at the Singapore General Hospital
(SGH) from severe burns. Lim Chu Kang cemetery, as it turned out, is
where her mother is buried.
DEPRESSED
Madam Ang, who was depressed and suicidal at times, had sought
treatment at the Institute of Mental Health.
Last year, the divorcee reportedly invited the monk, an old
acquaintance in his 40s, to live with her. She had no children. Her
maid had helped to load a bag of kerosene bottles and bottles of
brandy into the Mercedes' boot that June afternoon.
Later, police found several suicide notes written by Madam Ang at
her home.
On Oct 11, the coroner recorded a suicide
verdict.
We contacted the monk but he declined comment.
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