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SINGAPORE: An elderly woman who saw that someone had pushed her garbage containers out of her home during Chinese New Year thought a visitor had done this and used her home key to scrape off the victim’s Audi A4.
The repairs and the cost of temporarily renting another car cost the vehicle owner about S $ 15,000. The defendant, Ang Guat Beng, 76, was fined S $ 7,500 on Monday (September 14) for mischief.
Ang pleaded guilty to one count of mischief scratching both sides of the victim’s car with a key on the night of January 26 this year, along a road in Serangoon Gardens.
The court heard that the victim and her husband headed to her friend’s house near Ang’s home for the Chinese New Year celebrations that night. The exact locations were removed from court documents.
He parked his car in front of Ang’s house. When Ang returned home from a walk, he saw that the containers that were usually outside his home were nowhere to be found, said his attorney Adrian Wee of Characterist LLC.
He did not recognize the Audi A4 parked in front of his house, and finally found his containers 20 or 30 meters away, about four or five houses down.
She had to push the containers back, “not an easy task for a 76-year-old,” said Mr. Wee, and she became angry and frustrated. She was also unhappy with the people who had parked their cars in front of her house.
He assumed the victim had been responsible for pushing the containers and used his house key to scratch the car.
Ang left scratch marks along both sides of the Audi with his key, the prosecutor said.
When the victim returned to his vehicle, he saw the scratches and filed a police report before sending his car in for extensive repairs.
The total cost of the damages, including the costs of renting an identical vehicle while the original car was being repaired, amounted to S $ 14,752.20.
Ang initially refused to compensate the victim, but paid the full amount last month.
The prosecutor requested a fine of at least S $ 8,000, saying Ang’s crime was “totally unprovoked”.
He also said that little weight should be given to his guilty plea as the incident was clearly captured by in-car camera footage.
Wee had asked for a fine of S $ 5,000, saying Ang had made a full refund and “completely regrets his actions”.
“Our client’s actions were committed unexpectedly and were not the result of a thoughtful decision,” he said.
For mischief, Ang could have been jailed for up to two years, fined, or both.
