Six months’ jail for woman who threatened social worker with chopper

SINGAPORE — Furious that a scheduled supervised access to her then four-month-old son was cancelled, a woman armed with a chopper and a knife stormed into a Social Service Office (SSO) to confront a female social worker.

Upon seeing her, Neo Mui Liang, 45, thrust the chopper at the victim’s neck, as she thought the woman was responsible for the cancellation. But the victim was able to push Neo’s hand away, while other staff at the SSO restrained the accused until the police arrived.

On Tuesday (May 30), a district court sentenced Neo to six months’ jail for criminal intimidation and possessing offensive weapons without lawful authority. Another charge of causing alarm by using threatening behaviour was taken into consideration.

The court heard that on Feb 24, Neo — who was a divorcee and unemployed — received a call at about 10am from the Social Service Office @ Taman Jurong, informing her that supervised access to her son that afternoon had been cancelled.

She was supposed to meet the boy for an hour every Friday.

It was cancelled out of safety concerns for Neo’s son after the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) received information that she was emotionally unstable following a dispute with her boyfriend, who is the boy’s father. 

Neo’s son has been under the MSF’s custody and placed in foster care since he was born last October. The ministry had assessed that Neo, who has a teenage daughter from a previous marriage, was incapable of caring for him.

On arriving at the SSO at about noon on Feb 24, Neo held a knife with a 7cm blade against her neck as she approached the counter officer and demanded to speak to the victim. At the same time, Neo was holding a chopper with a 15cm blade in her left hand. 

Upon seeing the victim, Neo quickly accosted her and held the chopper to her neck, but the social worker broke free. The victim was also able to disarm Neo, with the chopper’s blade coming off its handle during the struggle.

In mitigation, Neo’s lawyer, Mr Genesis Shen, highlighted her long history of mental illness, as Neo had been diagnosed with a number of psychiatric disorders, including anti-social personality and depression.

The separation from her son had also caused Neo’s mental stress to increase significantly, and she had experienced “great emotional trauma during the times that she was not permitted to see her son”, he said.

Mr Shen noted that Neo had also caused minimal hurt as she had cut her own wrist instead of hurting the SSO officers during the confrontation.

In sentencing Neo, District Judge May Mesenas urged her to seek counselling, telling her that she should be motivated to do better if she wanted to see her child. “You were not in the state of mind to have access,” the judge added.