Neighbour caught smearing faeces on letterbox

SINGAPORE: Displeased with his neighbour over issues such as staring incidents, an elderly lorry attendant smeared his faeces onto the younger man’s letterbox in July.

Sim Ann Heng, 71, harassed retiree Tan Yam Chwee, 67, again later that month by pasting an obituary photo onto Tan’s letterbox.

Sim was jailed for two weeks last Friday after pleading guilty to two harassment charges. A third harassment charge was considered during sentencing.

Prior to these incidents, Sim was convicted on June 19 of assaulting Tan and was sentenced to five months’ jail. Court documents did not reveal details about this case.

Sim later filed an appeal and was released on bail.

Still unhappy with Tan, who lives two storeys above him in a Housing Board block in Commonwealth Avenue, Sim went to the ground floor sometime between 6.30pm on July 10 and 7.50am the next day and smeared his faeces onto the retir- ee’s letterbox.

Tan alerted the police after spotting the mess and town council workers later cleaned it up for free.

After this incident, the police installed a camera in the area and an officer was making his rounds at around 1.10am on July 15 when he spotted a man writing something on a letterbox.

Investigations revealed that Sim had taken an obituary picture of a dead man, written Tan’s name on the cutout and pasted it onto the letterbox.

When more officers arrived at the scene, Sim admitted that he had pasted the picture there as he was unhappy with Tan.

The court heard that Sim withdrew his appeal on Aug 13 and began serving his sentence for the assault offence later that day.

For each count of harassment, he could have been jailed for up to six months and fined up to S$5,000 (RM15,160).