Joshua Lim Wei Kiat sought after his friend, Chia Wei Poh, for help to evade police detection and the latter hid him inside a suitcase.
Chia, 32, was then sentenced to 17 months’ jail for his role in helping Lim in his offence, and for hiding him with the purpose of helping him hide from the police.
Two seperate charges, abetting to commit housebreaking by night with the intention to steal, and voluntarily obstructing a police officer from carrying out an arrest were also factored in when sentencing him.
Here are more details of the case..
According to the court, Lim was previously charged with housebreaking at night to steal on 12 September 2018.
Chia agreed to be the guarantor for Lim with the price of $15,000.
Lim failed to show up in court for his hearing and thus Chia forfeited $5,000 of his bail money. A warrant of arrest was also issued for Lim.
Sometime in 2019, Chia was contacted by Lim because he needed a place to stay. Chia was told by Lim that he had a newborn son, and also wanted to clear his credit card debts.
He was also told that he would get back his $5,000 from Lim’s job as a deliveryman.
Chia allowed Lim to stay at his home for free and him a clerical job at his moving and transportation business out of pity.
In June, Lim told Chia that he wanted to commit housebreaking another time as he needed money.
It was not known if Lim was discouraged by Chia but a mutual friend of theirs suggested place that they could commit the crime.
Chia eventually played a part because he drove Lim to buy necessary equipments to commit the crime, and also drove Lim to the crime scene.
He found out that Lim had only stolen $25.
When police arrive at Chia’s to arrest Lim, Chia was afraid that Lim would fall and kill himself if he escaped from the balcony and therefore he hid Lim in a lugguage.
However, he finally admitted that he hid Lim and told police where Lim was hidden.
The sentence
Chia’s lawyer, Mr Singh mitigated by saying that Lim had used Chia’s kindness as his weakness by using his family and debts to gain sympathy.
Mr Singh also said that Chia could not bring himself to break Lim’s family up if he would to turn him in as Lim’s family would become homeless.
He sought for a jail term of 15 months on the grounds that Chia only did what he did because he had a heart of gold and did not want to destroy a family and he did not gain from the crime financially.
Lim was given a total of four years and six months of imprisonment, as well as four strokes of the cane, on July 17 last year.
Chia was eventually given 17 months of imprisonment
Image source: Google maps and unsplash.com