BMW driver charged with fracturing security officer's wrist after pushing him at United Square mall

SINGAPORE — A 41-year-old man was charged on Wednesday (April 27) with seriously injuring a security officer, after allegedly getting into a confrontation with him outside United Square mall late last year.

The security officer, 56, fractured his wrist as a result of the incident with Wang Lin, who is said to have been driving a BMW at the time.

Wang, a Singapore permanent resident from China, now faces a single charge of voluntarily causing grievous hurt to Mr Prakash Govindan Damodaran.

He allegedly pushed Mr Prakash on the chest at the mall’s taxi stand around 11.45am on Nov 6 last year. The officer then fell backwards and sustained a fracture, court documents showed.

TODAY reported in February that Mr Prakash had filed a police report alleging that Wang almost knocked him over at the mall in Novena, before alighting and pushing him until he fell.

It came to the public’s attention when the Union of Security Employees posted about it on its Facebook page on Feb 16.

The union’s executive secretary Steve Tan told TODAY at the time that the officer approached the union only a few weeks before Feb 16 to seek help “to get action taken on the perpetrator”.

At the time, Mr Tan said that the officer was still on medical leave.

The police report stated that the guard had been working as a senior security officer at the mall for about five years at the time of the incident.

While he was carrying out traffic control duties around the mall’s taxi stand, the BMW driver allegedly cut across traffic lanes illegally, defying the officer’s instructions and almost knocking him over.

The officer wrote that the driver then alighted from the vehicle, approached him “aggressively” before allegedly pushing him and causing him to fall.

The driver was said to have fled in his car as soon as the guard mentioned that he would call the police.

On Wednesday, Wang’s lawyer told District Judge Terence Tay that she intends to write to the prosecution for any video footage of the incident.

Wang will return to court on May 18 and remains out on S$12,000 bail.

If convicted of voluntarily causing grievous hurt, he could be jailed for up to 10 years, as well as fined or caned.

The incident was the second one involving alleged abuse of security employees that recently surfaced.

In January, a 61-year-old male driver of a Bentley was arrested for acting rashly, following a viral video that showed the car inching forward against a security officer outside Red Swastika School in Bedok North.

A 62-year-old male security guard sustained minor injuries in that case.

The case has been referred to the Public Prosecutor “for a decision on the appropriate course of action”, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said earlier this month.