73-year-old Ferrari driver pleads guilty to obstructing traffic at Orchard Road
An elderly female driver who has had numerous run-ins with the law pleaded guilty on Monday (16 July) to one charge of obstructing other road users when she abruptly stopped her vehicle along Orchard Road during peak-hour traffic in June 2016.
Shi Ka Yee, 73, also faces two charges related to a drink driving case last year and another four related to a dispute with her neighbour over a rain tree at her Astrid Hill property in 2015. Her sentencing and mitigation submission have been adjourned to a later date.
Her lawyers, Senior Counsel Sreenivasan, S Balamurugan and Partheban Pandiyan, said Shi, who is an interior designer and owns an architecture firm, is expected to plead guilty to her remaining charges.
Road rage
The court heard that at around 5.20pm on 29 June 2016, bus driver Wu Xiaokui was driving his passenger bus along Claymore Road towards Orchard Road when he found himself directly behind Shi’s Ferrari sports car.
Shi’s vehicle was travelling very slowly, despite there being clear traffic ahead, which forced Wu to drive at 5kmh and prompted him to sound his horn twice.
When Shi’s car began turning left onto Orchard Road, Wu followed behind. However, Shi’s car abruptly came to a halt in the middle of the five-lane road, obstructing the third and fourth lanes, and leaving Wu’s bus unable to turn or move forward.
Wu sounded his bus’ horn again but Shi refused to move her car and instead alighted from her vehicle. The pair then got into a verbal dispute, during which Shi told Wu to return to China if he wanted to keep sounding his bus’ horn.
Wu asked Shi to move her car to the side of the road to avoid blocking traffic but Shi refused. By this time, a long traffic jam had formed.
At around 5.40pm, officers in a police patrol car noticed the jam and moved to determine its cause. It took them five to 10 minutes to drive from the junction of Orange Grove Road and Tanglin Road to the incident area.
The officers advised Shi, who was seated in her car, to move the vehicle but she said she was calling the police to report Wu’s behaviour. After a while, she complied with the officers’ request and left.
Other charges
In the Astrid Hill property case, Shi faces charges for allegedly trespassing into her neighbour’s bungalow and removing an ignition key from a crane, which left a worker trapped in the crane’s bucket for more than an hour.
She also allegedly hurled vulgarities at her neighbour and allegedly told him, “You cut my tree, my tree is living thing, I hope your kids die.”
Shi also faces one charge of committing a rash act by moving her sports car towards her neighbour when he asked for the crane’s keys to be returned.
She was also charged earlier this year with one count of drink driving and one count of failing to provide without reasonable excuse a breath sample to a police officer following an incident outside the Grand Hyatt Singapore hotel in February last year.
In March this year, Shi was also sentenced to four weeks’ jail and was disqualified from driving all classes of vehicles for six months for assaulting a BMW driver following a traffic dispute in 2014.
Shi, who was convicted of punching the motorist after a two-day trial, has appealed against her sentence – the hearing for which is set to take place at the High Court on 17 August.
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