extracted from the online new paper.
THE first sign that something was wrong was neighbours hearing a woman shouting for help at about 8pm yesterday.
About 45 minutes later, the police received a call from a man who said his girlfriend needed help.
He said he had received an urgent SMS from her which told him to call the police as she was in trouble.
The police responded immediately, but when they found the Bukit Merah flat, a man, armed with two knives, refused to let them in.
After the stand-off ended four hours later with the surrender of the man, the woman was found dead in a bedroom.
She is believed to be the wife of the man and was likely killed before the police arrived.
Neighbours told The New Paper that they saw the woman enter her home at about 6pm.
Two hours later, at about 8pm, they heard her shouting for help.
The police confirmed that they received a call at 8.45pm. On arrival at the address they had been given - Block 132, Jalan Bukit Merah - they started a door-to-door search.
When they were knocking on doors at the second storey, they found a man holding two knives at unit 02-1322.
He was seated in the living room of the three-room flat, and refused to open the door. The man was clearly agitated.
Police also saw a shoe and a handbag in the living room, but there was no sign of any woman.
As SCDF officers set up safety nets and an air mattress behind the flat where the kitchen was, police negotiators spoke to the man through the window grilles at the front of the flat.
The alleged killer finally emerges from his flat and is given a glass of water. They had broken open the front door grille, but stopped short of breaking down the wooden door despite having the necessary equipment as they did not want to worsen the situation.
Police negotiators were called in. The strategy was to try to get the man's relatives to talk him into giving up.
When The New Paper team arrived at about 9.30pm, at least 200 people were watching the drama unfold from behind police cordons.
We made our way towards the flat from an alternative staircase, and spoke to the owner of the unit just above the man's flat.
The woman, who gave her name as Mrs Goh, said she had heard a couple quarrelling and shouting over the last two nights. But she could not be certain it was from the unit below.
The quarrels would take place at about 2 to 3am.
Mrs Goh said she had earlier heard the sound of glass breaking followed by a man shouting.
'I've been living here for three years, and the family moved in after me, about two years ago. But I have not seen the children or the couple, because their door is always closed,' she said.
As we moved down the staircase, we heard the voices of two young children. They were chatting and laughing with police officers. We then learnt that they were the couple's children.
With them was a middle-aged woman, who told us that she was the man's elder sister.
She did not give her name but said her brother was 37 years old.
'They are always quarrelling... his wife is not Singaporean, she's from Jakarta,' she said.
'I was taking their children home when this happened. I don't even know what's happening,' she added, before being called away by a police officer.
She and an older woman, believed to be her mother, had been called to the scene to persuade the man to put down his knives and open the door.
Police and SCDF officers waited quietly along the corridor as the man's family pleaded with him to give up.
They had shields and equipment to break down the door. One officer held a stun gun. At certain points, the man's sister seemed agitated and would shout at the man in Hokkien.
After more than an hour, at 12.30am, the door still didn't open and the family was clearly getting tired and frustrated.
At this point, Special Operations Command officers arrived with shields and a sledgehammer.
But before they could act, the man opened his door at 12.40am.
He was given a drink of water by an officer. He also bent down as if to hug his children, who had also been taken upstairs.
As the police searched the house, they found the body of a 26-year-old woman. She was clad in blue jeans and a white blouse, and lay face-up on the floor of a bedroom. There were bruises on her neck, but no other visible injury.
The man was arrested and taken away. The police confirmed that they will be treating the case as murder.
At press time, they had yet to identify the victim.
