SINGAPORE: A woman and her girlfriend started a fire outside a flat in Canberra on June 17, damaging three pairs of slippers, after an unknown man offered them S$2,500 through messaging app Telegram to commit arson at the unit.
On Aug 1, Clara Yip Zi, 20, pleaded guilty to one charge of committing mischief by fire.
The judge called for probation and reformative training reports for Yip, and adjourned sentencing.
The case of her girlfriend, Alexandria Tammy Lim Xuan Yi, 25, is still before the courts.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Jing Min said that at the time of the offence, Yip and Lim were in a romantic relationship and were living together.
Lim referred to the man on Telegram as “boss”, and even when Yip told her not to go ahead with the crime, Lim insisted on it.
That night, the couple went to the unit at Canberra Road to carry out the man’s instructions.
It was not stated in court documents why the man wanted the women to set fire to the unit.
When they arrived at the unit, they saw that the door was open.
The prosecutor said Lim was afraid and did not want to follow through with the plan. But Yip urged her to get on with it since they were already at the unit.
Yip then poured lighter fluid on a cloth, set fire to it with Lim’s lighter and threw the cloth at the front door of the unit.
When the fire started to subside, Lim poured more lighter fluid on the cloth, and the fire spread to several pairs of slippers.
Both women took turns taking videos of themselves setting fire to the exterior of the unit and left the place after finishing an entire bottle of lighter fluid.
As a result of the fire, three pairs of black slippers outside the unit were damaged, said the DPP.
When a man inside the unit saw the fire, he quickly put it out with a pail of water and called the police.
The couple later went home and sent videos of them setting fire to the unit to the “boss”. But the “boss” was not happy with their work as the videos did not capture the unit number, and told the women that they will not be paid for the job.
When Lim asked for another “arson assignment”, he gave her another location in Hougang. The next day, when the women left their home to go to Hougang, they were arrested.
When asked by the judge if she wanted to say anything in mitigation, Yip said “no”.
She will be sentenced on Sept 9.
If convicted of committing mischief by fire, an offender can be jailed for up to seven years and fined. - The Straits Times/ANN
