Tourist found dead at The Substation bled to death after smashing window in drunk, confused state: State coroner

SINGAPORE — It was only his second day in Singapore, having flown in to catch the Formula 1 Grand Prix last September. After drinking at Timbre bar located within The Substation compound, Nicholas Charles Mcgrath became intoxicated and started panicking when he could not find a way out of The Substation building.

So he used his fist to punch through a glass window, but in doing so, he cut his wrist and bled to death.

A cleaner at the building found his body covered in blood, lying in a hallway in the morning. He was pronounced dead at 8.30am on Sept 21. Mcgrath was aged 34 and was working as a construction manager in PM Electric in Australia.

In her findings released online on Thursday (April 16), State Coroner Kamala Ponnampalam ruled his death as an unfortunate misadventure. It put to rest a case that piqued some curiosity because the Australian’s death occurred under mysterious circumstances.

Mcgrath’s wife, Mrs Nicole Renee Mcgrath, had questioned if foul play was involved since her husband was not a heavy drinker or an aggressive person, adding that he was a good father who prioritised time for his family.

At 8am that day, the cleaner, identified only as Mr Farhan, reported for work and discovered Mcgrath lying in a pool of blood on level three of The Substation, a non-profit contemporary arts centre in the Bras Basah district. On that floor were classrooms that were let out to independent artists, corporations and members of the public for use.

Mr Farhan went up there because he smelt something foul. When he found Mcgrath on the ground, Mr Farhan also saw a broken glass window and many glass fragments on the outside of the building, some of them almost 4m away.

SEPARATED FROM COLLEAGUES

What happened the day before the gruesome find was that Mcgrath had gone out to catch the F1 practice races without his colleagues at about 3pm. He was in Singapore on a company leisure trip.

He sent videos of himself having drinks and watching the races at about 5.50pm to his colleagues on a WhatsApp chat group. He was with a person his colleagues did not know and he appeared tipsy.

Later, Mcgrath met up with his colleagues but separated from them again. They did not hear from him until 12.22am on Sept 21 when one of them saw a missed call from him. The colleague sent a phone text message to Mcgrath and went to sleep.

Mcgrath then headed to music bar Timbre.

Mr Lim Ruey Shyan, the operations manager at Timbre, said that Mcgrath ordered a beer and was looking for a spot to have his drink at about 1.40am. The bar’s employees had already started cleaning up the place then.

When he looked like he was walking out of the bar with the beer mug, Mr Lim quickly got him to settle down. They chatted for a while and by 2.45am, Mr Lim decided to call it a night. He got his laptop from Timbre’s office upstairs and left.

LOCKED IN

After Mr Lim left, Mcgrath went upstairs as well. Timbre’s outlet manager Enrico Quijano Sto Doming who was on that level saw him walking by very quickly towards a door leading out to a courtyard that was connected to The Substation.

Mr Doming called out to him but Mcgrath said, “It’s okay, it’s okay”, as he walked into the courtyard.

Mr Doming alerted another colleague, Mr Christopher Cruz Daquil, who went to take a look. He saw a man open the door leading to The Substation building. Mr Daquil assumed that the man was a staff member of The Substation and told Mr Doming that the man had entered the building.

Mr Doming then decided to have a look himself. He waited one or two minutes before returning to work when he saw that no one was coming out of the door at The Substation.

At about 3am, Mr Doming latched the door leading out to the courtyard, thinking that no one will be coming back in. He then went downstairs for a routine meeting with the bar’s employees. Mr Daquil also checked the door after the meeting to ensure that it was locked.

VOICE MESSAGES

A forensics examination of Mcgrath’s phone showed that he made two missed calls to a person called Matt Banks at 2.59am and 3am and left two voice messages, revealing his distressed state. He was heard shouting, “Open the door”, frustrated that he was unable to get out of the building.

Following that, Mcgrath called 000 — the emergency number in Australia — at 3.03am, and the call was diverted to the Police Operations Command Centre here.

This time round, Mcgrath repeatedly told the telephone operator, Ms Radiah Jamil, that he was dying. Ms Radiah tried to ask for his location many times during their phone call that lasted more than five minutes so that she could dispatch emergency resources, but Mcgrath could not give a coherent answer.

A forensic pathologist certified Mcgrath’s cause of death to be an acute haemorrhage from a deep incised wound on his right wrist caused by the jagged edges of a broken window that he smashed.

The pathologist noted that the locations of his bruises were unlikely to be defensive wounds, adding that he could have been in a state of intoxication since high levels of ethanol were detected in his biological samples.

With these, State Coroner Kamala concluded that there is no basis to suspect foul play.

“It’s likely that in his inebriated state, he had wandered up to level three. Once there, he must have found the building to be dark and deserted and became disoriented and incapable of finding his way out of the unfamiliar building,” she said in her report.