An incident involving a large ceiling fan injured two customers at a coffee shop in Tampines on Wednesday night.
The injured patrons are understood to be a young man and an elderly woman who were seated at the same table.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force said it received a call for assistance at Block 201D Tampines Street 21 at about 7.10pm on Wednesday. The 20-year-old man and 82-year-old woman were taken conscious to Changi General Hospital.
The coffee shop’s owner, Mr K.B. Soh, told The Straits Times that the fan had undergone yearly maintenance works earlier on Wednesday. In the 10 years since the fan and another had been installed in the coffee shop, there had been no prior incidents involving them, said Mr Soh.
After the works were completed, the fan was switched on and a serviceman on site tried to move a ladder below the fan.
This caused the fan’s blades to hit the ladder, which resulted in part of a blade breaking off.
There are conflicting accounts on what happened next but the incident caused two coffee shop patrons to be injured.
Photos posted online show one of the patrons, the young man, clutching the back of his head, which appeared to be bleeding.
Mr Soh said that the man’s head was injured while the other customer, the elderly woman, had arm injuries.
While many customers ran from the scene when the incident happened, some tried to help the injured duo, reported Chinese-language paper Shin Min Daily News.
One of them was medical doctor Lee Shi Zhong who bandaged the man’s wound. He said the man had a 3cm-long wound on his head.
Dr Lee said that the elderly woman’s arm was bleeding too, but her injury appeared to be superficial.
Mr Soh said he was in contact with the coffee shop’s insurance company and the two patrons to try to help the latter.
“This is the first time something like this has happened in my 36 years of running this coffee shop,” said Mr Soh.
“It’s like being a father who accidentally hit his child while driving. I never thought something like this would happen.”
- Additional reporting by Ang Qing