A 31-year-old man was sentenced to one year in jail on Thursday (Aug 24) for causing death by a rash act — two years ago, he had seized his father in a chokehold until the elderly man fainted and died.
Following the death of his 67-year-old father on Feb 10, 2015, Mark Tan Peng Liat was accused of murder. But when he was on trial in July 2016, the charge had been reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, Channel NewsAsia reported.
The father and son duo had been in an argument over money at their West Coast Rise home when the elderly man punched his son. In retaliation, Tan put his father in a chokehold. Both men attacked each other on the floor until Tan held his father in a chokehold again.
This time, the older man passed out, and Tan walked off, leaving his father on the floor. Tan later called the police and went with his father in an ambulance to the hospital.
Following a nine-day trial, District Judge Eddy Tham declared that the prosecution did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and convicted Tan of a reduced charge of causing death by a rash act. He said there was “no doubt” that Tan simply wanted to restrain his father.
Separately, Tan was also fined $5,000 for the illegal possession of 12 air pistols.
According to an autopsy report, the older man died of “manual compression to the neck with contributory cause of hypertensive heart disease”. Thirty-one injuries consistent with a struggle were found on the man’s body, showing that it was a significant enough force applied to his neck to stop oxygen supply to his brain.
Tan could have been sentenced to up to five years in jail and fined for causing death by a rash act.
The prosecution has filed an appeal against the judge’s decision to convict him of harsher charges, while Tan’s lawyer said that his client also intends to appeal against the conviction and sentence.
