SINGAPORE - A man has been arrested following a stabbing incident which shocked lunchtime crowds at Raffles Place earlier today.
A spokesman for the Singapore Police Force said that the police received a call about the incident at 1.04pm. When the police arrived on the scene, they determined it was a case of "armed robbery with hurt" . The spokesman added that one of the two men taken to hospital has been arrested and that investigations are ongoing.
The other man is believed to be badly wounded.
Eye-witnesses told The Straits Times the two men were involved in a skirmish around 1 pm near one of the Raffles Place MRT station exits.
Recruitment consultant Leon Lee was walking to his office at One Raffles Place when he saw a crowd, and two men on a grass patch.
One of them was on the ground bleeding profusely.
The other man was trying to attack him, while shouting and gesturing aggressively, he said. Soon after, passers-by pulled the attacker away and pinned him down to the ground.
He added that the victim appeared to have slash wounds to his stomach and arm.
"There were two ladies trying to stop the bleeding with tissue and cloth, and there was another woman, I think she works nearby, she brought a first-aid box to help him," he told The Straits Times. Mr Lee, 42, said that the police and the Singapore Civil Defence Force arrived about 20 minutes later.
Mr Lee was left shaken after witnessing the incident. "It's a shocker. Raffles Place is a very crowded place at lunch time. It was quite scary," he said.
A reader was told by eyewitnesses that two middle-aged Chinese men got into an argument outside Raffles Place MRT station just before 1pm on Friday, after which one man stabbed the other.
Another eyewitness, Ms Qiu, told Lianhe Wanbao two men were tussling with each other, and one took out a knife to stab the other in the waist, butt and left hand
The fight attracted the stares of passers-by, and one woman attempted to pull them apart. Both fell to the ground after the stabbing. Ms Qiu said that the attacker had attempted to snatch the victim's laptop bag.
Mr Ye Xiang, 27, who works at a bank, told Wanbao he saw the attacker stabbing the victim with a knife of about 15cm long. Three other men, two Caucasian and one Indian, also came forward to help.
The man who was injured chased after the one who stabbed him for about 200m, and both men ended up near UOB Plaza. Student Roy Chng, 25, said that when he arrived on the scene at 1pm, an ambulance was attending to the victim. The attacker appeared to have an injury on his arm.
