Thread: News Stories
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Old 2013-12-09, 10:06   Link #32134
TinyRedLeaf
Moving in circles
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
Quote:
Originally Posted by JokerD View Post
More like a street wide, 'just' 400 people

Deceased foreign worker in Little India Riot was drunk: Police


A mix of alcohol fueled courage and recklessness maybe?

That seems like a unusually high number of emergency vehicles damaged...

If I'm right, there's quite a few CCTVs in that area, should be seeing a lot of arrests soon.
My shorter, and hopefully less cluttered version of the events, as given by the police at their 5pm news conference today (Dec 9).

Police release timeline of events leading to riot
Quote:
The police say the Criminal Investigation Department has started investigations into the riot in Little India on Sunday night.

The riot involving about 400 people was sparked off by a fatal accident involving a private bus and a pedestrian.

The deceased has been identified as a 33 year old male Indian national, Sakthivel Kumaravelu.

At a briefing today, police also released a timeline of the events leading to the riot.

TL;DR…
 
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938LIVE
It's been an exciting weekend, a truly once-in-50-year event, as far as Singapore is concerned. I got the call from my editor at 11.30pm on Sunday night. I was literally in my pyjamas.

Her initial brief was for me to go down to the scene in the morning to report the damage and gather reactions from people in the area.

I immediately checked social media. A colleague of mine, the social-media queen in our team, had already been Whatsapp'ing us the developments as early as 11pm. By that time, the Special Operations Command was already well on the way of dispersing the crowd.

Hardly any of us were paying attention to the news at the time — it was Sunday night, after all, with expectations of a slow news day the next day.

By midnight, practically the entire reporting team at my station was awake. We were rapidly updating each other as quickly as possible over our private Whatsapp group.

I decided, heck, I should be a busybody. I was the only one in the team with a car, so I drove off in T-shirt, bermudas and sandals (and with my recording equipment, of course), intending just to catch sight of events unfolding first-hand.

The e-mail from Police Headquarters arrived at just after midnight, calling a news conference at 1.30am. I immediately called my editor and turned back to get changed.

One of my colleague was dispatched to the incident scene right away, while I sped off to the police headquarters in the wee hours.

By the time my colleague arrived, the rioting was already over. The situation was under control, the cordon set up. But the damage was still there. Wrecked vehicles, including the smoking skeletons of police and civil-defence vehicles that had been set on fire.

News conference during the wee hours

Meanwhile, practically the entire press corps had gathered at the Police news conference room. 1.30am came and went. It was until around 2am before the Deputy Prime Minister arrived with his colleague, the Second Minister for Home Affairs, along with the Police Commissioner and his deputy.

The DPM and 2MIN had just returned from the incident site and the delay was because they were being debriefed by police officers of the latest figures and news.

My colleague at TV was desperate to beam the news conference live, but unfortunately the reception was poor, so it ended up being broadcast late.

Soundbites gathered, I rushed back to the newsroom, clocking in at around 3.30am. Hammered away the first reports and it was 5.30am by the time the first "writes" and "radio SOTs" were written, vetted and put on queue for the first bulletins at 6am.

Throughout this time, the reporter colleague of mine at the scene had been taken into the cordoned area by police officers. He and other reporters took photos of the aftermath.

He got back to the newsroom at about 5am, just as I was finishing up my reports.

It was already near dawn. My colleague had been tasked to cover reactions from shopkeepers and residents in the area first thing in the morning.

I was supposed to head back home for rest, to return at 12pm for follow-ups, but I was running on adrenaline, so my colleague and I headed down to the scene again.

We arrived at about 6am. I think my colleague and I, plus another reporter from TV were the only reporters on scene at that time. The damaged vehicles were being cleared, with the private bus that sparked the whole incident towed away at about 6.30am.

After videoing that, I dropped by the newsroom again to upload the clip before heading back home to sleep.

The next whirlwind round

From 12pm, it was a mad whirl of keeping up with the updates while chasing the relevant authorities for comments and reactions. Caught wind of a social-media initiative for people to meet in the area later on Monday evening to spread "flowers of peace and reconciliation".

Tracked down the person who started the initiative via mutual Facebook friends and interviewed him. Filed the story at about 3.30pm.

Next learnt that police were holding another news conference at 5pm, but they had forgotten to inform us radio reporters. We learnt about it from a report on a rival news website at 4.45pm. Mad rush to the police headquarters, getting there just in time (I'm glad now that I drive!).

Hence the above report.

Going to crash out now.

This was what I signed up for, recording and writing the first rough draft of history.

It'll be a weekend to remember for a long, long time.
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