In a bizarre incident, a man after being fired from his job, got furious and locked up nine of his former colleagues in the office in Singapore.
Last year, in the month of September, fifty-two-year-old Vict Lim Siong Hock padlocked the main door of his ex-workplace, confining people inside for about an hour, as per Channel News Asia (CNA) reports.
On Monday (Aug 7), he was fined $2,976 by a court after he pleaded guilty to one count of wrongful confinement, with another charge of sending an abusive message to his former colleague, the outlet added.
Lim accepted the position of a driver and logistics assistant at an electronics company situated in Pantech Business Hub in late May 2022 and began working on 1 July 2022.
He used to work between 8 am and 4.30 pm or 5 pm and was allotted an hour for the lunch break. However, he was terminated on Aug 30, 2022, prior to the completion of his probation period, CNA reported citing court records.
After he was fired, Lim purchased a padlock from a hardware shop and decided to lock the main door, which was the only entrance to the office. He planned on doing so as he was resentful about being laid off.
He went to the office on September 1, 2022, and secured the entrance with the padlock around 2:20 pm. On being questioned, Lim said that he assumed his ex-colleagues were on their lunch breaks and that “probably all of them” had left the office.
However, the prosecutor said that such lunch breaks were staggered so that there was at least one employee looking after the office premises at all times.
After Lim had locked the door, after about 10 minutes an employee, who wanted to use the restroom, to his surprise realized that the door was locked from the outside. He then informed his fellow colleagues and the nine of them got trapped inside.
They then asked for help from another colleague who worked in a different part of the building. On inspecting, the latter confirmed that the door had been padlocked.
To safely get the trapped employees out of confinement, the owner of the organisation hired a locksmith, who charged around $60 to remove the padlock later that day. He then filed a complaint against Lim whose actions were recorded on CCTV camera.
For the wrongful act of confining, he could have been imprisoned for up to three years, faced a penalty or both.
(With inputs from agencies)
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