SINGAPORE: A man was jailed for 13 days on Thursday (Aug 10) for setting fire to a neighbour’s flat after a dispute over a prayer altar.
Patrick Francis, also known as Pandian, pleaded guilty to one charge of mischief by setting fire to his neighbour’s main door past midnight on May 8, 2022.
The court heard that the accused’s family knew the victim’s family for about six years before the incident. The accused’s mother lived in a unit on the first floor of a Housing Board block at Lorong 5 Toa Payoh, while the victim lived on the third floor with his girlfriend.
A few years before the incident in 2022, the victim’s girlfriend, 50-year-old Tang Yee Peng, requested for a small space at Francis’ mother’s unit on the first floor.
Madam Tang wanted this space to accommodate a Chinese prayer altar. Francis’ family agreed to give her this space.
This agreement continued until Mdm Tang had to return to Malaysia when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020.
While Mdm Tang was gone, Francis’ family continued to maintain the prayer altar on her behalf.
On May 7, 2022, Mdm Tang returned to Singapore from Malaysia after the pandemic lockdown ended.
She noticed that the lock on the prayer altar had been changed and she confronted Francis’ 76-year-old mother about it.
This angered Francis.
He went to Mdm Tang’s flat past midnight on May 8, along with his mother. He knocked on the main door and began shouting.
Mdm Tang and her boyfriend did not open their door. Instead, they looked at Francis through the peephole.
Francis’ mother soon returned home as she was tired. However, her son remained outside Mdm Tang’s flat.
He became frustrated by the lack of response from his neighbours and went downstairs to a refuse chute, where he picked up a brown bottle labelled “kerosene”, containing some liquid.
Francis returned to his neighbours’ flat on the third floor and poured the liquid from the bottle over the doorstep.
He used a lighter to ignite the liquid, causing a fire to start at the main door of the unit.
He then went back downstairs and discarded the bottle.
Another neighbour living on the third floor saw what Francis had done. Mdm Tang’s boyfriend also saw the fire and immediately called the police.
Officers soon arrived at the scene and put out the fire with an extinguisher.
Firefighters who arrived shortly after reported that the lower section of the main door and an umbrella had been damaged by the blaze.
Other parts of the flat which included the floor tiles, walls and ceiling near the main door sustained heat and smoke damage.
Police recovered the discarded bottle and found Francis’ fingerprints on them.
As a result of the fire, the victim had to repaint the gate to the unit, while the Housing Board replaced the main wooden door at no cost to the victim.
Francis made compensation of S$1,000 to the victim.
The prosecution asked for three to four weeks’ jail for Francis, noting that he had acted with premeditation as he wanted to confront Mdm Tang over the prayer altar dispute.
“The unit was a residential apartment located within an HDB block with many inhabitants,” said the prosecutor. “The accused’s act of arson could have easily gotten out of control and caused incalculable damage to not just the unit, but the entire block. It was entirely fortuitous that the police put out the fire before matters got worse.”
For committing mischief, Francis could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, or both.