'Bloodstained corridor, pool of blood at stairwell': Neighbours greeted by gruesome crime scene after Yishun murder

SINGAPORE — Mr Farhan Shah returned to his home in Yishun after an overseas holiday on Monday (Oct 10) sometime after 9pm, only to be met with a "gruesome" sight.

The corridor on the fifth floor of Block 653 Yishun Avenue 4 where he lives was covered in blood. 

When the 31-year-old project manager in the IT industry found out later that his next-door neighbour had been murdered, it was a big shock to him.

Even though he had heard the family having loud arguments in the past, he said that things had been peaceful in the last six months and he recently saw them spending time outside together.

In a statement on Monday, the police said that they received a call for assistance at a residential unit along Yishun Avenue 4 at about 7.05pm on the same day. Upon arrival, they found a 47-year-old man lying motionless outside the residential unit.

TODAY understands that the victim's body had been found not on the fifth floor of the block where he had lived, but on the fourth floor. 

The victim was pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene and his 19-year-old son was arrested. 

The police said in a separate statement on Tuesday that the son would be charged on Wednesday with the murder of his father.

No one answered the door when TODAY visited the victim's unit on Tuesday morning.

Mr Farhan, who has been living next door to the deceased for 12 years, told TODAY that his neighbours were a family with one daughter and two sons. He said that he did not speak with them much but had heard them quarrelling in the past.

"Even coming back from the 7-11 (convenience store) at the opposite block, I could hear them shouting from there.”

The convenience store is located at Block 654.

However, relations in the family appeared to have improved in the past six months. He had seen them going on jogs and for breakfast together, he added.

When he returned home from his holiday on Monday night, he said that he was shocked by the scene that awaited him.

"I looked down at the staircase (from the sixth floor) and that’s where I saw a pool of blood. It was quite gruesome to see that much blood, so right now I’m still trying to calm down from what happened last night."

Mr Farhan said that when he first reached the block, he found the lift landing cordoned off with police tape and many police officers were at the car park.

He had initially thought that something had happened to a neighbour on the fourth floor, because the police had covered up the sills of the fourth floor with a canvas.

So it was “a big shock” when he later found out that it was his next-door neighbour who had been murdered, he said.

“I’m just trying still to absorb what had happened,” he added.

When TODAY visited the block at around 11am on Tuesday, three workers from the estate’s town council were washing the corridor and painting over bloodstains on the walls. 

None of the other neighbours approached by TODAY said that they had heard or saw the incident as it happened, but they said that they were shocked to find out about the crime.

Mr Richard Tan, 73, who owns a flat on the fourth floor of the block, said that he returned home on Tuesday morning to the smell of blood. 

Mr Tan, who runs a craft shop, had stayed overnight elsewhere on the night of the incident and did not know what had happened.

He added that he had called the town council to repaint areas on the walls where there were spots of blood and only found out later why the blood spots were there. 

Another neighbour on the fourth floor, a 55-year-old delivery worker who wanted to be known only as Ms Tan, said that she saw around 10 police cars at around 7pm on Monday but she had not heard any commotion before that.