SINGAPORE — A man and his wife were sound asleep in the wee hours of Oct 30 in 2019 when they were awoken by a noise coming from one of the bathrooms in their ground-floor condominium apartment. 

Concerned, the man went to investigate and found the bathroom door locked. He heard someone inside scrambling out of the window, so he called the police.

On Wednesday (Jan 12), the intruder, Joshua Lim Zi Yi, was sentenced to an 18-month mandatory treatment order after the 23-year-old admitted to a single charge of lurking house-trespass by night.

A second charge of criminal trespass into a separate unit within the same condominium was taken into consideration for Lim’s sentencing. Court documents did not indicate what is his occupation.

A mandatory treatment order is a community sentencing option offered to offenders suffering from mental conditions that contributed to the offence.

Summarising the findings of a mandatory treatment report, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Keith Thirumaran said that Lim was found to be suffering from a “persistent depressive disorder… which had a contributory link to his offending behaviour”.

He told the court that on the day of the incident, Lim was on the way home along Mount Emily Road at about 2am after drinking alcohol.

He came across the condominium and went on to climb into the unit through the bathroom window. It was not stated why he picked the complainant's home. 

It was at this point that the unit's owners were awoken by the intrusion, but by the time the man got to the bathroom door, Lim had already climbed back out.

Lim did not leave the scene, but instead re-entered the home via the kitchen window, DPP Thirumaran said.

Realising that the intruder was in the kitchen, the couple turned on the lights and headed there to investigate.

Knowing that he had been discovered, Lim made his escape through the same window he entered and headed home. 

A check by the couple found that while their items were displaced, nothing had been stolen or damaged.

Before the husband called the police, he spoke to the condominium’s security team and discovered that Lim had also trespassed into another unit in the estate. 

For committing lurking house-trespass by night, Lim could have been given up to three years’ jail and a fine.