Woman fleeing unknown men ends up getting traffic summonses

NIBONG TEBAL: A single mother beat two red traffic lights in her panic to get to a police station after at least four unknown men on motorcycles chased her in the middle of the night.

The motorcyclists turned out to be policemen and Ooi Geok Swan, 47, ended up with two traffic summonses for beating the red lights when she reached the police station in Jawi near here.

Ooi, 47, wants the summonses cancelled and claimed that the motorcyclists were wearing plain clothes and did not identify themselves when they approached her car at a road junction in front of the Sungai Bakap Chinese cemetery.

She said she was on her way home alone when the men in dark clothes approached her car and knocked on the windows on Monday.

“I panicked and sped off as it was 3am and there was no one else in the area.

“While driving, I noticed them following me on their motorcycles and I decided to go to the Jawi police station for help,” the single mother told a press conference called by Jawi assemblyman Soon Lip Chee at his service centre in Taman Bukit Panchor yesterday.

Ooi said she panicked and ran the two red lights in her haste to get to the police station more than 1km away.

She said two of the motorcyclists followed her into the station’s compound where they identified themselves as policemen and asked her why she was running away from them.

“I told them that I did not know that they were policemen, as they had not identified themselves or shown their authority cards,” she said, adding that she was subsequently issued two traffic summonses by a woman police constable at the station.

Dissatisfied, Ooi brought a friend to the station later in the day to lodge a report on the incident but she claimed that the police did not want to take down her report and told her to settle the summonses instead.

She then decided to approach Soon for help.

Soon said he would write to state police chief Datuk Wira Chuah Ghee Lye to ask him to investigate the matter and to cancel the summonses as the policemen did not identify themselves which resulted in Ooi speeding off in fear to the police station.

South Seberang Prai district police chief Supt Shafee Abdul Samad could not be reached for comment.