SINGAPORE: A man was fined S$4,000 (US$2,976) by a court on Monday (Aug 7) for wrongfully confining nine ex-colleagues in an office for about an hour after padlocking the main door.
Vict Lim Siong Hock, 52, pleaded guilty to one count of wrongful confinement, with another charge of sending an abusive message to an ex-colleague taken into consideration.
The court heard that Lim accepted a job as a driver and logistics assistant at an electronics company at Pantech Business Hub in late May 2022 and started work on Jul 1, 2022.
He worked between 8am and 4.30pm or 5pm, and had an hour for lunch.
Lim was fired on Aug 30, 2022 before completing his probation period.
After his firing, Lim bought a padlock from a hardware shop, the court heard.
He planned to lock the entrance – the only door to his former workplace – as he was resentful about being terminated.
At about 2.20pm on Sep 1, 2022, Lim went to the office and locked the entrance door with the padlock.
According to Lim, he assumed that his ex-colleagues were on their lunch breaks and that “probably all of them” had left the office.
However, such lunch breaks were in fact staggered, and there would always be an employee looking after the office premises at any point in time, the prosecutor said.
About 10 minutes after Lim locked the door, an employee tried to leave the office to go to the toilet, but could not.
He realised the door was locked from the outside and told his colleagues what happened. A total of nine employees were locked inside the office.
They asked another colleague who worked elsewhere in the building to inspect the entrance door, and the latter confirmed that it had been padlocked.
The owner of the company hired a locksmith for about S$80 to remove the padlock later that day.
The owner then lodged a police report against Lim that evening.
Lim’s actions were caught on closed-circuit television footage.
For wrongful confinement, he could have been jailed for up to three years, fined, or both.