When Mr Desmond Loh was stopped from re-entering a club, he got irritated and “shot his mouth off”.
One of the things he did was to call Yeo Tian Soon, who was a bouncer at the club, fat.
Incensed, Yeo later rained a series of punches on Mr Loh. The beating was so vicious that Mr Loh had to go for facial reconstructive surgery.
Yesterday, Yeo, 20, pleaded guilty to two counts of voluntarily causing grievous hurt and a count of voluntarily causing hurt.
A third charge of fighting with another patron on a separate occasion was taken into consideration.
Commenting on the extent of Mr Loh’s injuries, District Judge Mathew Joseph said: “The court is amazed (that) using just your fist can cause such major injuries… It seems as though it was a sustained attack.”
The incident occurred on May 3 last year when Mr Loh, 28, and a friend, Mr Chua Hoe Ann, 27, went to Club Sonar at Orchard Hotel, where Yeo was working as a bouncer.
When they were checked by Yeo at about 4.05am, Mr Loh made “uncalled-for remarks” which annoyed Yeo, the court was told.
Yeo let the pair enter the club but then asked Mr Loh to leave. Mr Loh tried to re-enter the club five minutes later but was turned away by Yeo.
In an interview with The New Paper yesterday, the 28-year-old fraud analyst conceded that he had shot his mouth off as he was annoyed.
“I (told him), ‘You’re rejecting me entry cause you’re fat’. It was caught on CCTV according to the IO (investigating officer),” he said.
The comment was the last straw for Yeo, a taekwon-do blue-belt holder who watched self-defence videos in his free time.
He looked for Mr Loh at Club Aura, another club in Orchard Hotel. Club Sonar’s security supervisor and Yeo’s accomplice, Chee Chu Siong, followed shortly after.
PINNED
The court heard that Yeo threw multiple punches at Mr Loh and pinned him to the ground.
When Mr Chua tried to stop the fight, he was confronted by Chee.
Mr Loh did not retaliate. He then went home and tried to sleep but woke up coughing blood, he said.
He was later taken to hospital.
A CT scan revealed fractures on the left side of his face. According to court papers, the injuries were so severe that he had to undergo an open reduction internal fixation – an operation to fix a bone using surgical plates and screws.
As a result, Mr Loh said, that part of his face has lost some sensation.
He told TNP that his vision was also affected, and an eye surgeon had to fix it.
The severe injuries led Deputy Public Prosecutor Eunice Lau to call for reformative training for Yeo.
Throughout the attack, Mr Loh had not blocked Yeo’s blows or retaliate in any way, she said.
Yeo’s lawyer said in mitigation that the attack was an unfortunate one-off incident.
“This was not an act of gangsterism… It was an event that took place where tempers were lost and it went beyond what it should have been,” he said.
Judge Joseph called for probation and reformative training reports.
Yeo, who is now in remand, is expected to be back in court on April 19 for sentencing.
His parents, who were present at the hearing, looked resigned as the hearing was adjourned.
When approached, Yeo’s father, who declined to be named, told TNP: “What can we say? Of course we hope for the best.”
Mr Loh, who took two months to recover from the injuries, finds it difficult to forget and forgive.
“I do (get angry at Yeo) when I see the scans of my (facial) fracture, which was really crazy. Life threw me a curve ball,” he said.
Adding that there had been no apology from Yeo, Mr Loh said: “I don’t think anyone should do this to anyone especially when I couldn’t really defend myself… He was determined to take aim at my face, and that was the only part that was hit.”
fjieying@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on March 30, 2016.
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