Man found dead in Raffles Place shopping centre
UPDATED (25 August 2012, 3:13pm to add shopper's account)
A 26-year-old man was found dead by the stairwell of a shopping centre in Raffles Place on Friday afternoon.
Police said they responded to a call for assistance at 11 Collyer Quay, the site of The Arcade, at 4:34pm and, upon arrival, found the man motionless. The Indonesian-Chinese male was pronounced dead by paramedics shortly after 5pm.
Channel NewsAsia quoted a money-changer at the centre, Mohd Ali, as saying that the deceased was from Batam and regularly changed money with money changers in the area, sometimes up to S$100,000.
A man who was at the scene, 24-year-old investment analyst Asyraf, said that eye witnesses told him they found the dead body in the staircase and that the incident appeared to be a robbery that escalated into a killing.
"We couldn't see the crime scene from where we were standing and there were no signs of blood or anything. There was a man in his twenties crying beside a closed door which led to the staircase, and I was told that he is actually the victim's brother. To my understanding, they were both robbed at the same time," he told Yahoo! Singapore Saturday.
He described the crying man as Chinese with short black hair and wearing a white polo.
"It was heart wrenching to see him cry like that, sort of like in a whimper, very exhausted, to know that your brother is behind the other side of the door lying in a pool of blood, dead. I couldn't bear to watch his misery any further and I took my leave after a few minutes," Asyraf added.
Yahoo! Singapore understands that no arrests have been made, but police have classified this as an unnatural death and are investigating.
Additional reporting by Melissa Law
