The residents of Toh Yi estate have been alerted to watch out for a bespectacled man in his 30s, who had allegedly been spotted chatting with children to obtain their phone numbers.
According to The Straits Times (ST), the man was first spotted in July this year.
An advisory was later created by a group of Toh Yi residents called the Toh Yi Residents’ Network after the man in question allegedly followed a young girl and her helper to their Housing Board block in the estate.
According to the advisory, the man was seen loitering near Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School and the playground at Block 2 Toh Yi Drive.
Mr Derrick Tan, the chairman of the network, informed residents that on another occasion, the man had also asked “a group of boys to buy things for him and tried to invite them to his place”.
An incident that took place on 5 Nov at Thomson Plaza led some parents to speculate if the alleged stalker in Toh Yi was the same man.
A video shared on the Facebook group SG Kaypoh on 7 Nov showed the father of a nine-year-old girl filming his confrontation with a man in a yellow shirt who had approached his daughter for her phone number at Thomson Plaza.
According to the video, the girl had been approached by the man in the yellow shirt while she was alone at the claw machines after her father had gone to the toilet.
The nine-year-old later informed her father about what happened and they went back to the arcade to locate the man.
She was able to identify the man and that was when the father confronted the man in the yellow shirt.
Source: SG Kaypoh
The furious father made the man delete his daughter’s phone number from his contact list. Upon doing so, he noticed that the man had ongoing conversations with several girls under the age of 12, allegedly asking questions that ” would make parents really uncomfortable” such as asking them to go out with him.
When asked about his intentions, the man, who identified himself as 30-year-old John in the video, said that he was “making friends”.
He also said that he had been messaging “three or four” girls and admitted that he had a “sexual case” against him that was awaiting investigations.
During the confrontation, John revealed that he lived in Beauty World and that he worked for Food Panda. He also gave his phone number to the father.
He also said that he had “learned my lesson” and would delete his messages with young girls on his phone following the confrontation. He also freely offered his IC to the father upon request.
The father later lodged a police report against the man following the incident.
Following the circulation of the Thomson Plaza incident video, a post of the video with a caption allegedly written by the man’s mother, Janet, started circulating online.
In the post, Janet shared that John has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and had previously sought professional help.
“Because of the nature of his conditions, his rigid n [sic] Impulsive behaviour gets him into unnecessary trouble,” she wrote.
She added that John had difficulties holding down a job and while he “likes to have friends”, he could not get along with peers of the same age.
“Along the way, he discovered that young children are more susceptible to him,” she said.
“But on the other side, his communication with them is not appropriate due to internet/social media influence/exposure to implicit content, this behaviour is partly due to his difficulty in his social communication n [sic] interactions,” she added, pointing out that a neurotypical person would not reveal such sensitive information to a stranger as seen in the Thomson Plaza incident video.
Give us time to manage his problems.
Janet also urged others to let the authorities handle the matter, adding that she understood that this situation might make other parents concerned and anxious.
She ended the message by sincerely apologising to the parent of the nine-year-old girl.
Also read: M’sian Girl Films TikTok Video To Capture Her Stalkers’ Faces, Files Police Report Later
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Featured image adapted from SG Kaypoh Facebook Group and The Straits Times.
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