On that fateful day in August last year, 54-year-old divorcee Peter Tan got a call that no dad would ever want to receive — his daughter was in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital’s intensive care unit after falling from their seventh storey flat.
18-year-old Denyse Tan was naked as the day she was born when neighbours found her lying face down on the concrete walkway at the foot of Block 431 along Bukit Panjang Ring Road. She died two weeks later in the hospital when her condition got worse.
Her death was made even more tragic by new information released yesterday by State Coroner Marvin Bay — she had been on meth when she jumped out her bedroom window, most likely “in the wake of a likely drug-induced psychotic or delusional episode”, The New Paper reports. Remember kids: meth — not even once.
Weeks before the fall, the teen was said to have seen some kind of monster in her room, and she had been hearing kids crying as well — presumably hallucinations triggered by narcotics.
In court, it was revealed that she was introduced to drugs —specifically cannabis — in 2012, while she was still in secondary school. Later on, her dealer introduced her to meth.
On the day of the tragedy, police officers found no signs of a fight or struggle in her room, though they did find a small plastic sachet of cannabis.
The death of Denyse Tan has since been ruled to be a case of misadventure.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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