SINGAPORE: Sengkang General Hospital has clarified that a male nurse accused of deliberately killing a kitten in Bali before abandoning its corpse is no longer under its employment.

The Utama Villa Tulamben, a small luxury dive resort in Bali, exposed the nurse’s acts online. The resort, which kept the six-week-old kitten “Monkey”, said on Thursday (15 June) that the kitten was found outside the resort’s boundary wall on 6 June.

Calling the death of the resort kitten distressing and devastating, the team running the resort revealed that the young feline was found in a yellow PRIME supermarket plastic bag, with a cable tie tightened around her neck, suggesting that she was strangulated to death.

The resort also indicated that the kitten’s killing was a premeditated act by one of its guests, a 31-year-old male nurse known as Jeremy. CCTV footage showed Jeremy visiting their office repeatedly, where the kitten was kept, in the wee hours of 5 June. He was spotted at midnight, 1:30 am, 1:50 am and 2:10 am, calling out for the kitten without success.

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Finally, at 10:30 am, Jeremy forcefully removed the kitten from the closed office by prying the window open and pulling the cat out. The kitten’s body was found the next morning near his room, on the other side of the boundary wall.

The staff confronted Jeremy, who initially denied taking the kitten until he was shown the CCTV footage. He then admitted to taking her but claimed that Monkey had run away. He insisted he searched for Monkey twice around our premises, but the resort said his supposed search was not captured on their 12 surveillance cameras.

The resort also said two CCTV cameras recorded a yellow bag being thrown out from the guest’s bathroom, landing in the neighbouring property, about ten minutes after the kitten was stolen from the office. No other individuals were present in the vicinity where the bag was thrown.

Revealing that the defiant guest “challenged” them to share the incident online, believing that he cannot be punished as there is no footage of him killing the animal, the resort said: “We are deeply troubled to find out that the guest is a Registered Nurse in Singapore who has worked in public hospitals. It is deeply unsettling to think that someone entrusted with the care of others could also exhibit such callousness and cruelty towards animals.

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“Animal cruelty and abuse should never be tolerated, especially so from those within our esteemed caregiving services. His potential act of cruelty raises concerns about his psychological wellbeing that should not be taken lightly. If he is indeed capable of committing such heinous acts against a defenceless creature, we cannot imagine what else he is capable of.”

The resort added that the man holds the title of a Divemaster and that their dive guide has shared “troubling accounts of his misconduct underwater, raising legitimate concerns
about the well-being and safety of the divers under his supervision.”

Sengkang General Hospital promptly addressed the issue on social media the same day. It said on Facebook: “We are aware of a social media post circulating online with speculations that a nurse from SKH had allegedly killed a kitten in Indonesia.

“SKH takes a serious view of this incident and we would like to clarify that the nurse mentioned is no longer employed at SKH since February 2020. We have also informed the Singapore Nursing Board regarding this inaccurate information. The records have since been corrected.”