The young tailor’s sister heard the scream first. It was a sound she had never heard before, a sharp, terrified cry that cut through the ordinary afternoon air. She turned, and her older sister, Tan Chay Chan, was already falling, her hand pressed against her chest, blood seeping through her fingers. They had been walking together, the two of them, on their way to visit their older sister in Tanglin Halt.
It was supposed to be a simple visit, a Sunday outing. Tan Chay Chan was twenty-two years old. She worked as a tailor. There was no reason for anyone to want to hurt her.
But the bullet had found her anyway, and now she was on the ground, her life draining away on the pavement near the old roundabout in Queensway. The younger sister stood frozen, her mind unable to process what her eyes were seeing. One moment they had been laughing and talking, the next, her sister was dying in front of her. There was no gunshot sound that she heard, at least not one that registered in her memory.
Just the scream, and then the fall. By the time the police arrived at the scene, the young woman had already been rushed to the hospital. The officers initially believed she had been stabbed. The wound was small, a neat puncture in her chest.
It was only when the doctors at the hospital began to examine her that they realized the truth. This was not a knife wound. It was a gunshot wound. The bullet had pierced her heart.
Tan Chay Chan died ten hours later, without ever regaining consciousness, without ever being able to tell anyone what she had seen or what she had heard in those final moments. The case was a mystery from the very beginning. There were no eyewitnesses, or at least, no one came forward. The police combed the area, searching the surrounding Housing Development Board flats, interviewing residents.
They confiscated six rifles and one pistol from licensed gun owners in the vicinity for ballistic testing. But the tests revealed nothing. The bullet, a . 22 caliber round, could have come from a pistol or a rifle, and without the weapon that fired it, there was no way to match it.
The case of the tailor who was shot dead in broad daylight would never be solved. Fifty years later, it remains an open wound in Singapore’s history, a reminder of a time when bullets could fly through the air and strike down an innocent person without warning. To understand how such a thing could happen, you have to understand the Singapore of that era. It was a time when violence was a part of daily life, when armed gangs roamed the streets, and when the sound of gunfire was not uncommon.
The city that is now celebrated as one of the safest in the world was once compared to Chicago. In 1925, the Malaya Tribune made that exact comparison, calling Singapore a fledgling Chicago, a place where crime was rampant and where guns were easy to come by. The island was teeming with weapons in the 1920s, a result of the influx of immigrants who arrived armed, and the colonial government’s failure to effectively control the situation. Secret societies were waging wars in the streets, engaging in violent clashes that left innocent people caught in the crossfire.
Businessmen were involved in bloody disputes, and the sound of gunshots was a regular part of the city’s soundtrack. The situation only worsened after the Second World War. The Japanese occupation and the subsequent political turmoil created a fertile environment for gun smuggling. The Indonesian Confrontation, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian War, the coup in Thailand.
These were all events that destabilized the region and made it easier than ever for weapons to flow into Singapore. The borders were porous, and the coastline was long and difficult to patrol. Smugglers would bring in guns by boat in the middle of the night, landing on remote beaches and disappearing into the urban landscape. For a criminal, having a gun was about status.
It was a symbol of power. If you had a gun, you were someone to be feared and respected. If you had a gun, you could demand what you wanted and no one would dare refuse you. This was the world of the Hassan brothers, Wahab and Mustafa.
They grew up in a large family, two brothers who were drawn to a life of crime from a young age. Mustafa spent his youth in a juvenile rehabilitation center, while Wahab was an escaped convict. They were part of a gang that began by robbing jewelry stores and gas stations. Their first robbery was a disaster, a comedy of errors that ended with one of their own being shot by his own gang members due to their poor marksmanship.
One of their accomplices, injured and disillusioned, surrendered to the police and provided information about the gang. But the brothers were not deterred. They continued their spree, robbing gas stations, grocery stores, and stealing cars, always staying one step ahead of the law. By October 1972, with their partners being arrested one by one, the Hassan brothers went into hiding.
But their days were numbered, thanks to one detective named David Chan. On the morning of October 29, 1972, Detective Chan was not on duty. He was a quiet, observant man, and he had taken it upon himself to do something that would change the course of the investigation. He was at a coffee shop in the Labrador Park area with two off-duty police officers.
It was around noon on a Sunday, and they were supposed to be relaxing, enjoying their day off. But Chan noticed something odd. A small car pulled up near the shop, and two men got out. They were casually dressed, and they approached the stall to order drinks.
Chan’s trained eye didn’t miss the details. He looked at the man’s wrist, noticing a suspicious bulge. He nudged his colleagues and spoke in Hokkien, a warning in a language the suspects wouldn’t understand. He told them to be prepared, that one of the men was carrying a gun.
The two men, who were Mustafa Hassan and an accomplice, took their drinks and started walking down towards the beach. Chan decided to follow them. He called out, identifying himself as police, and drew his own weapon. He shouted for them to stop, to surrender.
He thought he could grab the accomplice and use him as a shield. But when he looked at the man, he saw he was unarmed. He couldn’t bring himself to shoot an unarmed man. The seconds stretched into an eternity.
A gunshot rang out. It was Mustafa. The bullet struck David Chan. He felt a jolt, a strange sensation that he couldn’t quite place.
He tried to raise his own gun, but his fingers wouldn’t respond. His body was paralyzed. He didn’t feel any pain at first. His neck just felt very hot, and he was consumed by a terrible thirst.
It was only when he was transported to the hospital that the pain began. It was an agonizing, searing pain that told him his life had been irrevocably changed. He had been shot, and he was lucky to be alive. Mustafa Hassan, the man who had shot him, was arrested that same night.
David Chan would survive his wounds, but the images of that day, the sound of the gunshot, the feeling of his body failing him, would stay with him forever. The arrest of Mustafa did not end the reign of terror of the Hassan brothers. Wahab, the older brother, was still at large, and he was determined to free his younger sibling. Mustafa was being held at the Outram Road Hospital when his brother launched a daring rescue mission.
Wahab overpowered a guard, took his gun, and freed his brother from custody. The audacity of the act stunned the authorities. It had never happened before, a suspect being broken out of a hospital in broad daylight. During their escape, they hijacked a taxi and nearly shot the driver.
For two days, the Hassan brothers were on the run. The police received a tip-off that they were hiding in the Jalan Kubor Muslim Cemetery. A massive manhunt was organized, and the police surrounded the area. Jamal Singh, a member of the Quick Response Unit based in Queensway, was among the first responders.
Four volunteers, including himself, accompanied their leader to the cemetery. They were tasked with searching for the fugitives. They made their way through the grounds, flashlights cutting through the darkness. They found a small hut, and as they searched it, they found a matchstick, a bottle of Dettol, and a piece of cotton wool.
Signs that someone had been there recently. As they moved on, they saw two figures break from cover and run towards the swamp and the cemetery. The Quick Response Unit deployed tear gas. In the midst of the smoke, they heard gunshots.
Then, a sudden, ominous silence. Jamal Singh and his team advanced cautiously. In the distance, they saw a figure behind a tree. He said a silent prayer and crawled forward to investigate, determined to do his duty despite the danger.
He found Wahab and Mustafa. They had chosen to take their own lives rather than be captured. Each man’s hand was still clutching the gun he had used to end his life. They were dead by their own hand, a final act of defiance in a life defined by violence.
The image of the two brothers lying in the cemetery, having chosen death over imprisonment, fed the public’s fascination with the criminal underworld. But for every criminal who met a violent end, there were innocent victims, like the tailor, Tan Chay Chan, and there were police officers who paid the ultimate price for their commitment to upholding the law. One such officer was Detective Ong Bo Hing. He was a newly married man, and on July 12, 1973, he was off duty.
He was riding a bus when he witnessed a traffic accident. A bus driver and a car driver were arguing, their dispute escalating quickly. Ong Bo Hing stepped in to play peacemaker. He was trying to de-escalate the situation when the car driver, a wanted criminal known as Botak, pulled out a gun and shot him twice.
Ong Bo Hing was killed instantly. The killer then brazenly took the detective’s service revolver before fleeing the scene. The murder of Ong Bo Hing, a man who was simply trying to help, a man who was off duty and not involved in any kind of dangerous operation, shocked the nation. It was the catalyst for a major crackdown on gun crime.
The police offered a reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to Botak’s capture. He was located a few days later by police informants and was killed in a shootout with police near the Istana. The government responded to the public’s outrage with decisive action. The Arms Offences Act was passed in August 1973, a piece of legislation that introduced much stricter regulations on the possession of firearms and imposed harsh penalties for those who used them.
The death penalty became mandatory for the use of firearms during a robbery, whether or not anyone was injured or killed. The mere act of carrying a gun could lead to a lengthy prison sentence. The law had an immediate effect. The number of armed robberies plummeted, and the era of gun-toting gangsters was brought to a swift and brutal end.
Lee Siew Ting, a former police officer who rose to the rank of Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, reflected on the change. He remembered the days when the police were routinely outgunned and outmatched. He remembered the difficulty of trying to track down the source of the illegal weapons that were flooding the streets. The guns used by the Hassan brothers were said to be from Thailand, rented out for specific jobs.
The smuggling business was a lucrative one. There were approximately 120 secret societies in Singapore during the 1960s and 1970s, and many of them were involved in the trade. The coast was too long to patrol effectively, and the smugglers were always finding new ways to get their goods through. But the new laws changed the calculus.
The penalties were too severe. The police were also given more resources and better training. The borders were tightened, and international gun smuggling syndicates became wary of operating in Singapore. The stringent gun control laws became a cornerstone of the nation’s commitment to safety and security.
Today, owning a firearm in Singapore is exceptionally difficult. The process requires extensive background checks, interviews, and strict adherence to regulations. As Alex Teo, a member of the Singapore Rifle Association, explained, the rules are designed to make sure only law-abiding citizens, with a legitimate need, are allowed to own a gun. He has to apply for a permit every time he wants to buy ammunition, and even the storage of his weapons is strictly regulated.
It’s a small price to pay, many would argue, for the peace of mind that comes from living in a society where gun violence is virtually unheard of. The shooter who killed the tailor, the woman who was walking with her sister on a peaceful afternoon, was never found. The theories about what happened to her were numerous. Some believed a sniper had fired from a nearby block of flats.
Others thought it might have been a stray bullet, fired carelessly by someone out hunting, possibly from a car driving down Commonwealth Avenue. The truth died with the shooter. The case remains unsolved, a haunting reminder of a dark chapter in Singapore’s past. The law that was passed in response to the violence that claimed her life, and the lives of others, has ensured that such a tragedy is incredibly unlikely to happen again.
But the memory of Tan Chay Chan, the young tailor who was simply walking to visit her sister, is a powerful testament to the importance of the rule of law and the collective responsibility to maintain a safe and peaceful society. The city moved on, the streets became safer, the crime rate dropped. But the story of the girl who died in her sister’s arms is one that should never be forgotten.
It is a story of loss, of a life cut short, and of a nation that responded to tragedy by vowing to never let it happen again.
