Man held over brutal kidnap and assault of teacher
KUALA LUMPUR, June 10 — A man was arrested last night over a vicious kidnapping and robbery that left its victim, 51-year-old teacher Teoh Soo Kim, in a coma, The Star reported on its website today.
“We are bringing him back here for questioning and will be remanding him on Monday,” Serdang OCPD Supt Abdul Razak Elias was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
According to Abdul Razak, police managed to track down the man after they publicly released composite images of two people suspected to be involved in the attack.
In the June 6 incident, Teoh was reported missing after leaving her Bandar Kinrara 2 home to pick up a student.
She was discovered with severe injuries, believed to be the result of a savage assault, in an oil palm estate in Kuala Selangor, and has since been put into an induced coma.
Her wounds were so extensive that her husband was not able to identify her initially.
Teoh’s Proton Saga was, however, missing when she was discovered. Efforts to locate the car resulted in the discovery of a surveillance video from a fuel kiosk in Puncak Jalil showing two men in Teoh’s vehicle.
The teacher’s abduction was but one in a recent string of violent crimes in the Klang Valley, leading to growing concern over public safety here.
A week prior to Teoh’s attack, a young woman narrowly escaped being kidnapped from the parking lot of The Curve shopping mall.
In March, schoolboy Nayati Shamelin Moodliar was kidnapped while walking to a school in Mont Kiara and later released after he was ransomed by his family.
These and other anecdotal incidences cast doubt over the government’s announcement that crime, especially violent street crimes, has nose-dived since the inception of the Government Transformation Programme.
Today, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein brushed aside such concerns, saying the cases were “isolated” and that national crime statistics showed no surged in violent offences.
