SINGAPORE: A man who padlocked the main door of an office for an hour after getting the boot received a S$4,000 fine on Aug 7 (Monday).
After his ex-colleagues discovered they had been locked into their office building, the business owner had a locksmith remove the padlock and then filed a police report against Vict Lim Siong Hock, now 52. CNA reported that he had worked as a driver and logistics assistant for the company but was fired before his probation period was over.
He entered a guilty plea to one count of wrongful confinement. However, another charge of sending an abusive message to a former co-worker was also taken into consideration in his sentencing. On the charge of wrongful confinement, Lim could have ended up in jail for up to three years, been made to pay a fine, or both.
On Jul 1, 2022, Lim started working at an electronics firm at Pantech Business Hub. However, the company let go of him on Aug 30, 2022, whilst he was still on probation.
The court heard that because he had been fired, he took a padlock he had bought from a hardware store and locked the office’s front door. This action was caught on CCTV cameras.
He claimed to have thought that the employees were out to lunch and that “probably all of them” were not in the office. But the prosecutor argued that since lunch breaks were staggered, someone was at the office during working hours.
Lim placed the padlock on the entrance door of the office on Sep 1, 2022, at around 2:20 in the afternoon. Ten minutes later, when one employee tried to use the bathroom, he found that the office was locked from the outside.
After informing his colleagues who had also been trapped inside the office, they asked another colleague in another part of the building to check it out. This colleague confirmed that the padlock had been placed on the front door.
The business owner then called a locksmith to free the trapped workers, paying $80 for his services. /TISG