Reformative training for teen in Chinatown fight

A teenager who was involved in a brawl in Chinatown, which also resulted in him being injured, was sentenced yesterday to at least a year of reformative training for being part of an unlawful assembly and other offences.

Muhammed Shazryl Hykel Abdullah, 19, will be detained in a reformative training centre and made to follow a strict regimen that includes foot drills as well as counselling.

A video of the melee on May 10 was captured on a closed-circuit television camera and later widely shared on social media. The clip shows two groups of people fighting along a corridor on the 16th storey of Block 101 Upper Cross Street, People's Park Centre.

Shazryl, who suffered lacerations on his left thigh and slash wounds on his back, had faced a slew of charges when he was hauled to court earlier this year.

On Nov 2, he pleaded guilty to two unrelated counts of cheating as well as one count each of being in possession of drug utensils and being part of the unlawful assembly linked to the brawl.

He also admitted to an offence under the Covid-19 (Temporary Measures) Act.

The fight took place during the circuit breaker from April 7 to June 1, when people were not allowed to leave their homes without a valid reason or meet others from different households to socialise. Eight other charges, mainly for cheating, were considered during sentencing.

Shazryl was on the run from the law for cheating offences when the fight broke out.

After obtaining a woman's credit cards from a Dani Zulastri Mohamed Salim, Shazryl unlawfully used one of them on Nov 16 last year to buy two iPhones worth nearly $3,000 in total at Mustafa Centre.

Later that day, he used another of the credit cards to buy two more iPhones worth nearly $4,000 in total at a store in VivoCity shopping mall. All four devices were later sold for about $6,000 in total.

The rightful owner of the cards made a police report and Shazryl was charged with cheating on Dec 2 last year. But he failed to turn up in court on March 25 this year and a warrant of arrest was issued against him.

On May 10, Shazryl and his friends got into a fight with a rival group over a woman. During the brawl, two people slashed Shazryl with knives before fleeing the scene. The police were alerted and Shazryl was found lying behind a pillar in a carpark, bleeding profusely from his wounds. An ambulance then rushed him to the Singapore General Hospital.

The cheating case against Dani, 20, is pending.