SINGAPORE: A coroner’s court has ruled the death of a 23-year-old man a misadventure after he was found dead at the foot of his condominium in August 2022.
Chinese national Zhao Mingjian had barely started working at his new job after graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) when he fell from the 15th floor.
His mother raised several concerns during the inquiry and did not believe he had died by suicide. She referred to the purportedly odd comments made by his friends at his funeral wake.
She also raised questions about two strange men purportedly seen at the condo’s lift lobby on the day her son fell off his balcony.
However, in a set of findings made available on Friday (Jan 12), State Coroner Adam Nakhoda found that there was no evidence to support the contention that there were third parties involved in Mr Zhao’s fall.
The very notion came from a neighbour telling the security guard that he had seen two strangers exiting from a lift at the level Mr Zhao stayed on, but this was “merely idle gossip” and did not happen that day, the coroner said.
The coroner also found that the comments made by Mr Zhao’s friends at his wake had no bearing on the circumstances surrounding his fall from height.
BEFORE THE FALL
Mr Zhao lived with his sister and parents at a condominium whose name was redacted from court papers.
He studied Biomedical Engineering at NUS and graduated in 2022. At the time of his death, he had just begun work as an engineer at Illumina Singapore for about a month.
At about 3.45pm on Aug 17, 2022, Mr Zhao fell from his condominium balcony and landed at a grass verge on the ground floor.
He suffered severe traumatic injuries and was taken to hospital but could not be resuscitated.
Mr Zhao’s mother, named only as Madam Zhang, testified that her son had told her the week before his death that he liked a fellow NUS graduate named only as Ms QAX.
Mr Zhao and Ms QAX became close friends after meeting in a dance co-curricular activity (CCA) at NUS in mid-2022.
Ms QAX testified that she believed Mr Zhao had romantic feelings for her, but that these feelings were never acted upon.
On the night of Aug 12, 2022, Mr Zhao went to Clarke Quay to drink alcohol with Ms QAX and other friends.
Mdm Zhang said she advised him to avoid drinking alcohol as it was bad for his liver, and he had a fever.
When Mr Zhao returned home the next morning, he told his mother that Ms QAX had shown him the middle finger and thought this was impolite.
Mdm Zhang told her son to disconnect from Ms QAX if he felt uncomfortable. Following this, Mr Zhao left all the dance CCA group chats, but later rejoined them.
Mdm Zhang’s husband, who worked in Beijing at the time, said he chatted with his son after the Clarke Quay outing.
According to Mr Zhao’s father, Mr Zhao said he and Ms QAX had mutual feelings for one another. The older man suspected his son was having some conflict with his friends as his son said he needed to “outdo the rest of the men to win over a lady”.
The deceased’s sister, Ms Zhao, said she took her brother out to watch a movie on Aug 14, 2022 as she knew he was struggling with his relationship issues and wanted him to “see things from a more universal aspect”.
Ms Zhao testified that her mother would put pressure on her brother to study harder, but would not insist on any specific results.
She also said her brother had not told her that he felt controlled by their mother, or that there were restrictions on how he lived his life.
THE DAY OF THE INCIDENT
On the morning of Aug 17, 2022, Mdm Zhang and her daughter each saw Mr Zhao at home.
Ms Zhao said her brother knocked on her door and told her that he had “come to a realisation about people’s relationships and trust issues”.
Closed-circuit television cameras in the condo recorded Mr Zhao’s movements after his sister and mother left the house – he was shown entering a lift on the 15th floor in gym attire at 11.30am, before exiting the condo at about 1pm.
He was not captured returning to the condominium, but the court heard this could have been due to a malfunctioning CCTV camera.
At about 3.45pm, a neighbour who lived in a block of flats opposite the condo heard a loud scream followed by a thud.
He called the police and confirmed that he had not seen or heard any physical altercation or arguments before that.
The police officer responding to the case noticed that the door to Mr Zhao’s unit was wide open, but that the gate was locked.
Inquiries with several units on the 15th floor and one on the 16th did not yield any information.
When the police entered the unit with Mr Zhao’s sister, he noticed that the sliding door to the balcony was open.
There was a pair of slippers there, one near the balcony and the other in a slanted position placed on a flowerpot. There were no signs of a struggle at the balcony or in the unit.
There was no suicide note found, although Mr Zhao’s phone revealed searches on Aug 4, 2022 for “world top suicide sites” and other similar searches.
After his death, Mr Zhao was described as “happy-go-lucky” and hardworking, and there was no evidence that he was under any form of parental or work pressure, the coroner found.
His mother described him as a “happy child” and said she had no idea why he fell from a height. She said she did not believe that his passing was due to issues with alcohol or relationships.
However, she found that the behaviour of some of her son’s friends during his wake was “abnormal”. For example, one of them asked if he could give a eulogy and Mdm Zhang found this suspicious as eulogies are meant to be given only by close family members.
She rejected the request and noted the unusual way this friend described her son as “cringe” in a document meant for last messages from Mr Zhao’s friends.
Mdm Zhang also found another of her son’s friends behaving abnormally during the wake because he kept squeezing his mask and did not answer when Mdm Zhang tried to speak to him.
Mdm Zhang felt that her son could not have committed suicide for a few reasons. First, he had not arranged his slippers neatly before falling. Second, he had not worn his spectacles, and third, he had not put on a new pair of shorts.
The coroner found this opinion to be “speculative”.
CORONER’S FINDINGS
Additionally, while there were searches on suicide, the coroner said they were not conclusive that he intended to take his life – he may “simply have been interested in the topic”, said the coroner.
While the coroner said the evidence showed that an incident had taken place during the Clarke Quay outing, he said there was no indication that this incident had affected Mr Zhao so much that he decided his only solution was to take his own life.
The coroner said it was not possible to conclusively establish that Mr Zhao had jumped from the balcony with the intention to end his life.
“Conversely, I was not able to dismiss the possibility that he could have fallen from the balcony accidentally,” said the coroner.
There was no evidence to suggest foul play.
The coroner conveyed his condolences to Mr Zhao’s family for their loss.