Students, parents not taking chances after kidnap scare

SINGAPORE: Police have determined that one of the drivers in two kidnap scares involving international students had no ill intent, but students and parents are not taking any chances.

Many students from the two schools that The Straits Times spoke to yesterday said that the van driver in the case should have been more aware that his actions were alarming. Parents said they would still be cautious.

Said Tanglin Trust student Julia Nasser, 12: “It’s just creepy – you shouldn’t be offering strangers rides in vans.”

In the first case last Thursday, a United World College (UWC) South-East Asia Dover campus middle-school student, who would have been between 11 and 14 years old, was waiting for the bus in Dover Road when she was approached by a man driving a van who asked the student to get into the vehicle.

She walked away, and later filed a police report with her parents.

It is understood that the driver claimed he merely offered a lift to the student because it was raining then.

The second incident involved a female student from Tanglin Trust School in Portsdown Road. She was walking to school on Tuesday at 12.30pm from one-north MRT station when she was approached by two people in a white van – said to be driven by a woman – who asked her to get in.

The girl ignored them and continued to walk to school. The two occupants of the van then got out of their vehicle and continued to try to persuade her to get in, but she moved away quickly and arrived at school safely.

Even as parents were sending their children to UWC in Dover yesterday, with a long line of cars waiting their turn to drop off the students, there were still concerns over last week’s incident even though the man involved was determined to have had no ill intent.

Seven-year-old Pragya Kumar, who studies at the school, said that even if the man in the first case claimed he was just being helpful, it did not make her feel any better.

“I am scared. Nothing good happens whenever a girl meets a van like that. I’m afraid that it could happen to me,” she said.

Another student, Leon Lee, 14, had similar sentiments.

“It isn’t really a comfortable feeling being helped by someone you don’t know in that way. It just all seems too suspicious,” he said.

Over at Tanglin Trust School yesterday, a long line of cars also waited to get into the school compound. Drivers had to bring special passes identifying themselves as parents or guardians.

Housewife and parent Jasmine Gan, 31, said that while the measures had been in place for some time, the school became stricter in enforcing them at the start of the school year last August.

Corporate secretary Ellen Tsai, 37, who accompanies her young son to the school every morning, said she would continue to do so and not take chances, especially in light of the cases: “I would rather err on the side of caution.”