Dazza Pictures

So you must have heard the news already from a couple of weeks ago, of the Police shooting at Outram MRT station which killed one.

Well, I was there when it happened. Or should I more honestly say, I heard it happen.

I was on my way to Chinatown via the MRT and had alighted at Outram to transfer to another train. I came down the flight of stairs to the platform and stood waiting near the foot for the train. My ears were plugged into the iPod, listening to some random tune. I had a wedding to cover that evening and was cautiously looking at the watch, deciding if I had time for a haircut. “7mins” read the plasma screen. And in Singapore, that is an eternity.

Then from out of nowhere… BANG!

At that instant and the split moments that followed, the station fell silent. Having heard 5.56 rounds before, I first thought “WTF! Some poor kid’s balloon”. A long pause followed before…

“Arrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh……..” a long loud groan.

It took almost 5 seconds before ANYONE on the platform reacted.

“Ehhh! He got a knife!” I heard a concerned youth cry out to his girlfriend, “Quick run run!” And at the corner of my eye, I saw the said dude, protectively pulling his girlfriend away.

Then there was a collective and somewhat unison “EHHHH!” and a scuffling of feet as the rest of the crowd ONLY NOW reacted.

Call me stupid, but my first instinct was to fight the flow of the retreating crowd to find out what had happened. “Don’t move! Don’t move!” I heard yell, which I assume was one of them cops. I turned the corner of the Elevator shaft that had obstructed my view of the drama to behold -

With his face flat forward to the ground and one hand clutching his chest, lay a man motionless on the ground and two police officers surrounding him. One of the police officers still had his pistol drawn, eyes fixed and gun pointed at this man I could not identify. I feel I can quite surely guess that the first face that had come to the mind’s of everyone in the vicinity at that time, would have probably have been escape JI leader Mas Selamat. As the other officer kicked the assailants knife away, the ‘trigger cop’ motioned for his partner to keep the crowd away.

“Stand back please.” , “Hello HQ, shot fired.”… “No choice la, he had a knife” … “blip, click…” Amidst the chatter, some dude came forward and shamelessly asked the officer, “Eh! Who is that you guys shot ah?!” “Don’t ask so much, dunno, dunno.”

I noticed a Caucasian couple indicate to the “dunno, dunno” cop, that the bag lying on the ground at the foot of the, I guess now deceased man, was theirs. Honestly, the police themselves did look a bit blur – “What just happened? Did we just shoot a man?”, whilst still having the look of “I need to look in control, but I can’t hide my insecurity right now.” And just like a scene from ‘Cloverfield’ a dozen cameraphones began shooting or filming the scene in front of them – including the owner of this blog. I scanned through my phone book to dial for the first person in SPH that came to mind – Beeker. ‘Damnit, isn’t he on holiday somewhere in Europe now? No matter, someone will post this on Stomp soon enough.’ I thought after getting a busy tone.

Not long after more cops arrived, some plain clothes and others uniformed. And soon enough, the MRT to Chinatown arrived where I hopped on and spoke to the Caucasian couple from Detroit, America whose bag the police retrieved. It was going to be their last night in town and would be leaving with a story to tell. They were directly in the line of fire where the shooting happened. She asked if I thought it was “That guy, they’re after.”, we agreed it probably wasn’t and they were still impressed enough by our country that “I know your country is safe”, yeah this doesn’t normally happen.

Doesn’t normally happen. It doesn’t normally happen that a police officer discharges a weapon in a public area, in Singapore, often. Normally.