Man who punched cabby amid spat with girlfriend jailed 5 weeks
A man who rained punches on a taxi driver amid a quarrel with his girlfriend was jailed five weeks at the State Courts on Tuesday (12 December).
Dino Teo Wei Chiang, 23, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntarily causing hurt to Goei Ah Gee, 41, on 29 November last year at the VivoCity taxi stand.
On the night of 28 November 2016, Teo and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Jasmine Goh Pei Ling, had been drinking at St James Power Station. At around 6am the next morning, the duo began fighting as they headed towards the VivoCity taxi stand.
As Teo’s girlfriend wanted to leave the area, she boarded Goei’s taxi and rejected Teo’s requests to alight from the vehicle. Teo asked Goei not to drive off before slamming the taxi’s door.
When Goei got out of his taxi to check whether the door had been damaged, Teo started punching the taxi driver’s face. Goei tried to defend himself during the 90-second attack but was repeatedly hit.
Goei later called the police. A visit to the hospital that afternoon found that he had sustained bruises to his nose and jaw.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Mark Yeo, who sought five months’ jail for Teo, said that the disturbance was initiated by Teo and that Teo had attacked a vulnerable part of Goei’s body.
In mitigation, Teo’s lawyer S S Dhillon said that his client was not a taxi passenger and only got into a scuffle with Goei when the taxi driver confronted him.
For voluntarily causing hurt, Teo could have been jailed up to two years, fined $5,000, or both.
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