The 18-year-old teenager who spat over the railing at Bugis Junction to the lower floors on Feb. 28 because he was bored during the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging Singapore, has been sentenced to nine months' probation.

Cai Jiaxu, a polytechnic student, was sentenced on Wednesday, Aug. 26.

Cai has to perform 60 hours of community service.

He has to remain indoors from 10pm to 6am daily for the duration of the probation.

A S$5,000 bond was posted by his parents to ensure his good behaviour during probation.

Young offenders under probation can continue with their education or employment while serving their sentences.

He pleaded guilty in July to one charge of public nuisance.

Those found guilty could be jailed up to three months, fined up to S$2,000, or both.

What happened

Cai was bored during the pandemic and so he decided to spit over the fourth-storey railing at Bugis Junction mall on Feb. 28.

The incident occurred three weeks after the Singapore government raised the country's outbreak alert response level to orange as the pandemic worsened.

He was with two friends: Jolin Huang Rui Xian, 19, and a 17-year-old boy who cannot be named due to recent amendments to the Children and Young Persons Act.

His friends posted a video of his deed on their Instagram accounts.

They later deleted the video.

But the footage was widely circulated online by then.

In the video, Cai’s friend is seen standing next to Cai and looking over the railing.

He then hits Cai’s head.

Cai spits over the railing as the video pans down to the diners.

Cai had asked the other boy to hit his head to make it appear as if the spitting act was accidental.

Huang overheard them and took out her mobile phone to film the act, and encouraged the other boy to hit Cai’s head.

The other boy did so and Cai spat over the railing.

The projectile fell within the vicinity of six or seven diners at a Subway sandwich store on basement one.

They left the mall after that.

Video slammed

Huang posted the video in their text-messaging chat group in the evening that day.

She and the other boy then posted it on their Instagram accounts but deleted it around 10.30pm the same day.

The video was reposted on Instagram by other accounts and was slammed by users for being unhygienic.

A Bugis Junction representative made a police report on March 3, even though it did not receive complaints from patrons.

About a week after the video circulated online, a Facebook user who claimed to be one of the trio reached out to Mothership on March 6.

He said that the group had cleaned up the spit and that the spit did not hit any shoppers.

He also said that the trio had apologised to the Subway staff.

However, when Mothership contacted a Subway representative, the staff at the outlet were apparently unaware of any such apology.