Murder of Boo Tiang Huat

Boo Tiang Huat was born in Singapore during the British colonial period in 1947. Boo first joined the Singapore Police Force in 1973, and he gradually rose through the ranks, attaining the post of deputy OC of the Whitley NPP, a position he held from November 1989 until 1992, when he retired at age 45. Later, he was re-employed by the police force in 1993 and returned to his old post. By the time before his death in 1994, Boo attained the rank of Senior Staff Sergeant (SSSgt). During his two decades of employment in the force, SSSgt Boo was often recognized and awarded for his meritorious service and responsibility as an officer, including the Police's High Commendation award in 1993, and in October 1994, a month prior to his murder, SSSgt Boo received a Commander's Award.[1][2][3]

SSSgt Boo was married to a clerk named Chew Tuan Jong, and together, the couple had three children - two daughters Bin Bin (aged 15 in 1994) and Shan Shan (aged 13 in 1994), and a son Jia Liang (aged seven in 1994).[4][5]

On the early morning of 30 November 1994, both SSSgt Boo and his partner, Corporal Muhaimin bin Mawasi, were at Newton Road carrying out their usual patrol duty when they noticed a Malay man behaving suspiciously near Goldhill Plaza. The officers thus approached the man, who was carrying a black bag, and they inquired him about his identity and asked for his ID card as part of the routine check which police should perform while on patrol.[6]

Right then, the Malay man took out an axe and violently swung it at SSSgt Boo's head, and as he collapsed on the ground, 47-year-old SSSgt Boo Tiang Huat died instantly on the spot due to the fatal head injury. Corporal Muhaimin quickly gave chase after the suspect, before he returned again to the scene to tend to his fallen partner. The ambulance arrived soon after and paramedics pronounced SSSgt Boo dead at the scene.[7][8]

The police cordoned off the area and they searched the whole area for the suspect, with the tracker dogs deployed to sniff for the suspect. Soon after the incident itself, a 24-year-old handphone exporter named Geoffrey Yeo Yap Hin (杨业兴 Yáng Yèxīng), who was driving to meet up with a friend for supper, spotted the suspect running off the crime scene and towards an open field around Khiang Guan Avenue. Mistaking the man as a hit-and-run suspect, Yeo alerted a passing patrol car about the sighting, and more than 70 officers went to the place, and eventually cornered the suspect at a private apartment block of Lincolnsvile. At 3.30am, the suspect was finally arrested at the sixth floor of the condominium building, which was 500m away from the place where he allegedly murdered SSSgt Boo. Yeo, who was later commended by the police for his assistance in apprehending the killer, was shocked when he later realize the man was a murder suspect, but he nevertheless offered condolences to SSSgt Boo's family.[9][10][11]

In light of the suspect's capture, Police Commissioner Tee Tua Ba condemned the man's violence against a police officer and stated that any suspects who acted defiantly against lawful authority, especially those that come with acts of violence, would not be spared from the "full force of law".[12] Commissioner Tee also expressed that the police and prosecution would pursue a preliminary murder charge against the suspect, who had several previous convictions, for the killing of SSSgt Boo.[13]

The murder of SSSgt Boo Tiang Huat was the second case where a police officer was killed in that year 1994 itself. In May of that same year, just six months before SSSgt Boo was killed, Corporal Hoi Kim Heng was knifed to death by a drug addict while he was discharging his duties, and the killer, 50-year-old Soh Loo Ban, was subsequently gunned down by police after he injured another police corporal Tan Huang Yee (who survived his injuries).[14][15]

After his death, SSSgt Boo was posthumously promoted to Station Inspector (SI) as a recognition of his meritorious service to the force and this promotion letter was sent to his 45-year-old wife. Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng and Permanent Secretary (Home Affairs) Peter Chan were among those offering condolences to the fallen officer's bereaved family.[16][17][18]

SI Boo's funeral took place on 4 December 1994, and he was cremated with full honours on that same day, with his bereaved family, including his wife and three children (aged between seven and 15), and about 400 police officers (including Police Commissioner Tee Tua Ba and Superintendent Lum Hon Fye of the Tanglin Police Division) attending the funeral. The event was reportedly solemn and filled with heartbreak, especially when SI Boo's widow, who wept openly in public, had to be supported by her relatives throughout the ceremony.[19][20]

Meanwhile, the 27-year-old suspect, identified as Zainal Abidin Abdul Malik (also spelt Zainul Abidin Abdul Malik), a Malay Singaporean who was previously imprisoned for armed robbery and housebreaking, was charged with murder on 1 December 1994. Under Section 302 of the Penal Code, a conviction for murder by the courts would result in the mandatory imposition of the death penalty in Singapore.[21][22]

Two weeks later, Zainal Abidin was also additionally charged in court with vandalism and attempting to escape the prison cell where he was held in remand. The maximum penalty would be two years' jail and a fine for attempted escape from police custody, while one who was found guilty of vandalism would potentially receive the maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment, a S$2,000 and eight strokes of the cane.[23][24][25][26]

Zainal Abidin Abdul Malik
Born	1967 Singapore
Died	30 August 1996 (aged 29) Changi Prison, Singapore
Cause of death	Execution by hanging
Other names	Zainul Abidin Abdul Malik
Criminal status	Executed
Conviction(s)	Theft (one count; 1981) Housebreaking (two counts; 1981 and 1983) Armed robbery (one count; 1988) Murder (one count; 1994)
Criminal penalty	Probation (1981) Three years' reformative training (1983) Three years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane (1988) Death penalty (1995)
Partner(s)	Unnamed accomplice (Housebreaking)
Details
Victims	1 dead, 3+ alive
Date	1981, 1983, 1987, 30 November 1994
Country	Singapore
Date apprehended	1981, 1983, 1987, 30 November 1994

Born in 1967, Zainal Abidin Abdul Malik was the seventh of eight children in his family.[27] Zainal Abidin's father died when he was merely five, and he was sent to an orphanage. Zainal Abidin often misbehaved even during his childhood, having run away from home several times before he started primary school, and he dropped out of secondary school at age 14, and also left the orphanage to fend for himself and he first found work as a cleaner at Lucky Plaza.

Zainal Abidin first ran afoul of the law by stealing a bicycle when he was 14. He was thus convicted and placed under probation for a year and assigned a job as a delivery assistant. However, Zainal Abidin re-offended during his probation period by mixing with ex-convicts and broke into houses with them, resulting in him receiving probation for four years. Zainal Abidin committed another housebreaking offence in 1983, resulting in him being sentenced to three years of reformative training before he was released and given an additional one-year probation.[28]

In 1987, Zainal Abidin, who was just released from his probation, committed armed robbery and he was thus arrested. A year later, he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and twelve strokes of the cane, and subsequently served his sentence at Changi Prison. During his term of incarceration, Zainal Abidin resumed his studies and received a certificate for passing his GCE N-levels in 1989. After he was released, Zainal Abidin went to work various jobs from time to time in the hotel industry, but he often perceived he was not given a chance for promotion due to his acne and appearance, and his educational background. Zainal Abidin also felt inferior due to his homosexuality, which he was raised to believe as an inappropriate sexual instinct through familial and Muslim beliefs.[29] A former employer of Zainal Abidin described him as an "excellent worker" during his tenure of his employment at a hotel around Orchard Road from 1990 to 1991.[30]

On 7 July 1995, 28-year-old Zainal Abidin Abdul Malik stood trial at the High Court for the murder of 47-year-old SI Boo Tiang Huat. Deputy Public Prosecutor Francis Tseng Cheng Kuang was the trial prosecutor while G. Raman represented Zainal Abidin as his lawyer. Judicial commissioner (JC) Kan Ting Chiu was appointed as the trial judge of the capital case.[31]

In his defence, Zainal Abidin stated that he did not mean to use the axe to assault or kill SI Boo. He stated that on that day itself, he wanted to go to a hotel (also his former workplace) at Newton Road to commit armed robbery, and therefore he packed up his black bag, which contained his axe, two knives, a hammer, torchlight, and a pair of gloves. However, at the last minute, he chickened out and aborted the plan and wanted to return home to Toa Payoh. At that time he was trying to leave, he happened to be stopped by both SI Boo Tiang Huat and Corporal Muhaimin bin Mawasi. Zainal Abidin recounted at that time, he was afraid of being caught for possessing a dangerous weapon and thought of randomly grabbing anything inside his bag as a weapon to distract the police before running away. And it turned out that when Zainal Abidin grabbed something with his right hand and swung it at SI Boo, he realized it was the axe he just grabbed and held. He insisted it was unintentional and it was an accident.[32][33]

Private psychiatrist R. Nagulendran appeared as a witness to support Zainal Abidin's second defence of diminished responsibility. He presented that Zainal Abidin should not be held fully accountable for his actions as he had a delusional disorder that impaired his mental responsibility at the time of the crime, given that he had delusions of wanting to bomb several places in Singapore and assassinate both the Senior Minister and Prime Minister, and self-harm symptoms, as well as his own upbringing, his feelings of inferiority over his homosexuality and his hatred against the Chinese for being more successful than the minority races like Malays and Indians, which made him perceive that the police would often preferentially pick Malay people like him for routine spot checks instead of the Chinese or Indians. Dr Nagulendran also cited the mental health history of Zainal Abidin's family members like his mother, two brothers and one sister who had similar mental disorders, so as to support Zainal Abidin's diminished responsibility defence.[34]

In rebuttal, the prosecution called upon Dr Chan Khim Yew, a government psychiatrist from the Changi Prison hospital. While Dr Chan agreed with Dr Nagulendran's diagnosis about Zainal Abidin's delusional thinking and ill feelings against the Chinese, he testified that despite the delusional thinking, Zainal Abidin was able to discern the difference between reality and imagination and did not put his delusions into action, and that he was able to think and decide swiftly on his feet while clamped down by fear during SI Boo's spot check of him, and had full control of his mental faculties at the time of the murder. DPP Tseng also argued that the prosecution's psychiatric evidence should be accepted as it showed that Zainal Abidin was not mentally abnormal at the time he committed the crime. As such, the prosecution submitted to the court to issue a guilty verdict of murder in Zainal Abidin's case.[35][36]