Maid detained after teenager found dead in flat

SINGAPORE — A 16-year-old girl, who was purportedly stabbed twice in the torso, was found dead in her flat in Tampines yesterday.

The case is being investigated as a murder and a 28-year-old woman, believed to be an Indonesian domestic helper in the teenager’s home, was arrested.

The police said they received a call at about 1pm, requesting for assistance at Block 856B, Tampines Street 82. When they arrived at the 10th-storey unit, the girl was understood to be lying motionless in a bedroom, and apparently had two knife wounds on the front of her torso. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

For about six hours, two units on the same floor as the family were cordoned off as forensic investigators collected evidence.

The victim’s body was removed from the flat only at about 6pm.

The teenager’s family spent hours with investigators at a friend’s home on the ninth floor.

One of the neighbours living on that level, who did not wish to be named, said she heard a female voice “crying loudly” in the morning, but did not suspect that anything was amiss.

Others said they were not on familiar terms with the family, who mostly kept to themselves.

But they said the family moved in less than five years ago and the girl had a younger brother, believed to be in primary school.

Other domestic helpers working in the block said they did not know the maid working for the family, although she had been there for about a year.

They claimed that her employers were strict with her and forbade the maid from speaking to outsiders or going out on her own.

The only times she was seen were when she helped to carry shopping bags home on Sundays, and when she accompanied the children to the playground, a domestic helper claimed.

Another said the helper had mentioned she was stressed out from working for her employers.

“The last time I saw her was six months ago, and she looked really stressed out and was skinnier than when I first saw her,” said a domestic helper on the sixth floor, who did not wish to be named.

This is not the first time a domestic helper has been implicated in the death of a child.

In October last year, Indonesian maid Nurhayati, 18, was jailed for 20 years after she threw a 12-year-old physically and mentally disabled girl down 16 floors from a block in Hougang.

In 2004, an Indonesian maid flung a five-month-old baby down 23 storeys in Tiong Bahru before throwing herself off a window ledge.

Two years before that, Sundarti Supriyanto, 24, stabbed her employer in her Bukit Merah office and set it on fire. Three-year-old Crystal Poh and her mother, Madam Angie Ng, died in the incident.