S'pore man, 32, gets jail for assaulting woman who took him in after learning of his family problems

A Singaporean man has been sentenced to prison for a total of a year and a half for various offences, including damaging the belongings of a woman who had let him stay at her condo for about seven months.

The woman was a 51-year-old cafe owner in Singapore, while the man, Xavier Lim Jia Han, was a regular customer at her cafe.

She had taken him in after learning that he was having problems at home.

Now 32, Lim pleaded guilty to four of his nine charges previously on Feb. 6.

The other charges were for driving without a valid driving licence, and cheating a car rental company into renting him a vehicle.

Apart from the prison sentence, the court also ordered on Jun. 30 that he be disqualified from holding a driving licence for four years.

Assaulted the cafe owner

According to court documents, Lim told the cafe owner in August 2020 that he was having disputes with his family and even fought with his mother.

Concerned, she allowed him to stay at her house temporarily, but he ended up overstaying his welcome even after she tried to convince him to return to his own home.

On Mar. 8, 2021, he saw her talking to his father in the condo car park, and got agitated.

He went up to the woman and pulled her hair, then grabbed her phone from her and threw it onto the ground.

He also started chasing after her in the carpark.

Destroyed her devices

Afterwards, he went to the woman’s unlocked car and took another phone and two laptops, then threw them onto the ground as well.

The two MacBook laptops were worth S$1,400 each, while the values of the phones were not established.

He intended to cause wrongful loss to the victim, who became anxious and was greatly inconvenienced following the incident, the prosecutor said.

He has not made any restitution to her to date.

Other offences

In terms of the individual sentences, the offence of destroying the woman's devices got Lim two weeks in jail.

He received the longest jail sentence — 12 weeks — for deceiving a car rental company.

On five occasions between Dec. 24, 2019, and Feb. 13, 2020, he used a friend's details to create an account with Premium Automobiles online, to rent vehicles for his own use.

The friend did not know nor did she give consent to him to use her details for this purpose.

Investigations revealed that in 2018, Lim had used his father’s details to rent vehicles from the same company, because he did not have a driving licence.

The company eventually blacklisted Lim as he had a poor payment record for his rentals and got into an accident in late November 2018 while driving a vehicle rented from them.

He was first arrested by the police on Mar. 18, 2021, and released on station bail the next day.

He was arrested again by the traffic police after reoffending on Jan. 27, 2024.

His jail sentence will be backdated to the date of his first arrest, from Mar. 18, 2021.