Clarke Quay brawl leaves couple stabbed, manhunt underway

As he was closing up at about 10.20pm on Saturday, The Tipsy Cow owner, Mr Raj Rai, heard a commotion at its al fresco area and saw two groups totalling more than 10 people fighting with each other.

Mr Rai, 47, and a staff member stepped in to break up the fight and push the brawlers out to the public promenade outside The Central @ Clarke Quay.

But the brawl resumed at a walkway leading to an underpass and ended with a man and a woman taken to hospital for minor stab wounds, The New Paper understands.

Yesterday, the police said they had arrested five men aged between 21 and 40 for rioting with a deadly weapon in Eu Tong Sen Street.

TNP understands that the weapon was a flick knife.

Dispute

Preliminary investigations found that two groups had fought after a dispute at a nearby restaurant.

The police were alerted at about 10.40pm, but the brawlers had fled by the time they reached the scene.

Bystanders were attending to the injuries of a 27-year-old woman and her 36-year-old male companion, who were later taken conscious to the Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

A man, 40, suspected of being involved in the brawl was later found injured and hiding at a dark corner of a back alley at nearby Carpenter Street. He was arrested and taken to SGH.

Central Police Division and Criminal Investigation Department officers were able to identify some of the alleged assailants from closed-circuit television footage.

Four men, aged between 21 and 34, were arrested within 16 hours. A manhunt is under way for the other suspects. It is not clear how many are still at large.

Separately, a 29-year-old man was arrested at the scene for disorderly behaviour.

In a video circulating online, several people can be seen walking towards the walkway, shouting and shoving each other.

The video, which has had more than 230,000 views, later shows paramedics treating a man. Blood can be seen on the wall and floor of the walkway.

Another video shows the man shouting in pain as a paramedic tries to stop the bleeding on his back.

In a third video, a woman is seen lying on the bloodied walkway.

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Mr Rai said the injured couple were patrons of his bar and bistro before closing time at 10.30pm.

It is believed that two men then rushed in from outside and started throwing chairs and tables at the al fresco area. They are believed to have had friends at the bar and they were later involved in the brawl.

Mr Rai told TNP that in his more than 20 years in food and beverage (F&B), he had never seen such a brawl before.

"When I went out and saw the commotion, my first instinct was to stop it...

"My son and daughter asked me if I was scared to get in the middle of it. I said I was not worried. My first instinct was to protect my business," he said.

This is the second case of rioting in a week. Last Monday, five men and three women between 22 and 27 were arrested after a group of eight people were allegedly attacked in a club at nearby Boat Quay.

Said Mr Rai: "I am astonished that in this era, such things are still going on. How can they be so brazen? Worse, this is during Covid-19. We are supposed to take care of ourselves."

Warning that they will not tolerate brazen acts of violence, the police said: "We will spare no effort to apprehend such offenders and deal with them in accordance with the law."

Those convicted of rioting with a deadly weapon can be jailed for up to 10 years and caned.

This article was first published in The New Paper. Permission required for reproduction.