THE 28-year-old Chinese national would have been getting ready to report for work early yesterday morning, but he never made it out the door.

One of his flatmates discovered him, clad in a singlet and a pair of shorts, lying in a pool of blood on his bedroom floor.

The flatmate called the police immediately. The victim, a worker at a printing and paper-products company, had been stabbed and was pronounced dead by paramedics at 7am.

Both of them were tenants, together with at least four other occupants - all Chinese nationals - at a four-room flat on the 10th floor of Block 94, Henderson Road.

Police are treating the case as murder and have arrested a 36-year-old male suspect, who also lived in the same flat.

The murder weapon, a black-handled kitchen knife with a long blade, was abandoned at the second-floor landing in the same block.

The murder suspect, who is also the deceased's colleague, is believed to have cast it there en route to his work place in Block 203, Henderson Industrial Park, where he was arrested by police shortly after.

He was in the process of setting fire to the printing company's office when police arrived at around 7.50am. It is not known why he was doing so.

While details about the damage he caused is not known, smoke from the fire had activated the building's sprinkler system.

When my paper arrived at Block 203 at noon, the office on the sixth floor was flooded and the entire stairway nearby was wet.

The deceased's employer could not be contacted for comment.

Neighbours at the men's flat told my paper that the tenants generally kept to themselves.

A 62-year-old man, who only wanted to be known as Mr Chua, told my paper that he sometimes bumped into the "quiet bunch" on their way to work at 7am each day.

He has spotted some of them wearing uniforms of a seafood restaurant in Lengkok Bahru.

According to Shin Min Daily News, neighbours directly below the deceased's unit had heard furniture being moved and sounds of people quarrelling at around 6.15am yesterday. Lianhe Wanbao reported that one of the neighbours also heard a woman scream at around the same time.

Neighbours also revealed that both the deceased and the suspect hail from Yunnan province in southern China.

rachchan@sph.com.sg

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