By Amanda Yong

THE family thought they were unlucky victims of a Christmas Eve theft.

But the same night, Mr N Srinivasan and his family found the missing items - and had another shock.

Their missing shoes and flower pots had been flung down from the common corridor of their 13th-storey flat in Block129 at Bedok North Street 2.

This was the first, but not the last time the family had their items taken by a killer-litter culprit whom residents and shopowners say has been menacing the neighbourhood for the past few weeks.

Mr Srinivasan, who has been living in the block for four years, said the latest incident took place on Tuesday.

That evening, the family discovered four pairs of shoes - two pairs of children's shoes, one pair of slippers and a pair of rubber sandals - missing from the shoe rack outside their unit.

Unlike the first time, the 35-year-old facility manager knew where to look for them. He went down to the open space in front of the coffee shop at the bottom of his block.

Sure enough, the shoes were strewn all over the place.

He also saw a huge plastic bag containing more shoes, shoeboxes and other items, which didn't belong to him.

MrMansor Talib, 60, a drinks-stall worker at the coffee shop, said: 'This happened three times on Tuesday. The first time, four pairs of shoes (were thrown down). The second time, there were four pairs, and the last time, it was the plastic bag.'

Tile broken

Pointing to a chipped tile jutting out above the ground floor, he said: 'The plastic bag hit the roof, causing one of the tiles to break. Then it landed on the ground.'

A metal roof above the coffee shop was also dented by another piece of killer litter - a medium-sized flower pot belonging to Mr Srinivasan - on Christmas Eve, MrMansor said.

Madam Maznah Ibrahim, 66, who works at the coffee shop's nasi padang stall, said it was thrown down during lunchtime on 24 Dec.

It was the first of three occasions when items came raining down that day.

At around 6pm, said Madam Maznah, the culprit struck again.

'A small pot of cactus which was thrown down narrowly missed a customer. He was so angry that he called the police,' she said.

'The last one took place at night. Somebody threw a shoe rack down with all the shoes and slippers inside,' she recounted.

The shoe rack, made of wood and metal, was smashed and taken away by cleaners.

Mr Srinivasan said that when his family returned home from a shopping trip on Christmas Eve night, they found two flower pots and four pairs of shoes missing.

The shoes were in a shoe rack outside his unit while the flower pots were placed against the corridor wall.

Besides the missing items, he noticed that one of the floor tiles he had stacked outside his unit was hanging dangerously on the common corridor ledge.

'I removed it because it looked like it might fall,' he said.

Two days later, his neighbour a few units away alerted him that one of his tiles was placed at the end of the ledge.

He immediately took the tile away and called the police.

As a precaution, he has removed the stack of 10 tiles outside his unit, 'just in case it happens again', he said.

His next-door neighbour, MadamLeong, an airport worker in her 50s, told The New Paper she was in Mr Srinivasan's situation about two months ago.

For about half a year, she had about 12flower pots lined along the common corridor outside her unit.

Then one of the pots was thrown down.

'A few weeks after the first incident, one of the plants was pulled out of the pot and thrown down,' she said in Mandarin.

She decided to remove all the flower pots in case another incident happened.

'I was scared because everytime I came back, I would find flower pots missing,' she said.

Bicycle tire thrown

Then the incidents stopped until two weeks ago when a bicycle tyre was thrown down.

Madam Maznah said customers had complained about that incident.

On 23 Dec, a bicyle rim was flung from the block.

Said Mr Mansor, who has been working at the coffee shop for eight years: 'We're worried that the next time this happens, it'll hit one of the customers as many of them like to sit in this open space.

'What if it hits a baby in a pram or children?'

He said he was especially concerned for the children in a tuition centre next to the coffee shop.

'The children usually mingle in the open area during their break and I'm afraid they may get hit.'

A police spokesman said they received two calls on 24 Dec, one at 1.20pm and the other at 6pm 'that somebody had thrown a flower pot to the ground floor'.

Nobody was injured on both occasions. Police said they are looking into the matter.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Jan 2, 2009.